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YOUTH MUSIC REVIEW Toto, We're Not In High School Anymore February 10, 2002
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By Janos Gereben
The worst moment of Sunday's Beethoven at San Domenico concert, a brief cacophony in the middle of Beethoven's Grosse Fuge in B-flat, served as a reality check, putting the whole experience in perspective. At your average high-school concert, such things happen all the time — yes, Mr. Holland. But here, in San Domenico School's Music Pavilion, bad notes are the exception. In two decades of the school's amazing tributes to Vivaldi, I seldom heard bad intonation, missed notes. This program operates on a higher level; it has produced — outside the setting of a music school — a score of musicians who are now members of major orchestras or are engaged in solo careers.
Faith France's Virtuoso Program, now under George Thomson's direction, is neither the usual music-school curriculum nor an "enrichment project" for high-school students. It is based on a unique — and singularly successful — idea to provide the challenge, the discipline, the opportunity of chamber-music performances to teenagers. Over the years, the Virtuoso Program helped raise young people following various professions, but in the possession of musical skills, as well as professional musicans on the order of Hai-Ye Ni, Karen Shinozaki, Robin Creighton, Jessica Lin, Lin Tung, many others.
As so many events here before, Sunday's Orchestra da Camera concert also produced some brilliantly promising performances by San Domenico's young citizen-musicians. Sixteen-year-old Jannie Lo was the soloist in the first movement of Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto, and her contemporary, Jihyun Yun, soloed in the first movement of Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole. In the wonderfully democratic, hard-working ways of this school, both participated in the entire program, returning to their respective seats in the orchestra, fully engaged, when not up front in the limelight.
sense of line Lo, now the pianist for the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, plays the violin and viola in the orchestra. The string experience was clearly audible in her performance in the piano concerto — she played long lines, full phrases, not individual notes. Her approach to the music was confident, straightforward, unsentimental but lyrical in a deeply felt way. In the cadenza, Lo exhibited two characteristics that seldom go together: virtuosity and a kind of humility as she let the music come through, instead of standing between the instrument and the audience. Yun ripped into the Lalo concerto (what this "symphonie" really is), with vigor and strength, surprising boldness, the more remarkable as her instrument was barely adequate for the task. And still, Yun maintained tempo and tone, even while high notes vibrated excessively in the violin — an impressive performance. The concert opened with an orchestral version of the finale from Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 59, No. 3, a work hard enough for four musicians, but more demanding for a chamber-orchestra of 20 strings. One clarinet (Samantha LaValley) and one flute (Kateri Chambers) assisted in some of the music. Thomson, who did some of the arranging himself, conducted the entire program, maintaining simple and effective control over his young charges. The opening and closing of the Grosse Fuge were very well played, but perhaps the goals for the concert were set too high. The soloists and the orchestra in the two concertos (especially in the Lalo) performed on the level of a small professional orchestra, but in the two quartet transcriptions, there were instances of harsh reality intruding on the magic of San Domenico's youthful talent. (Janos Gereben is arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group and technology editor for www.the451.com. You can contact him at janos451@earthlink.net.) ©2002 Janos Gereben, all rights reserved |