The matinee concert offered the 1841 Overture to Richard Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, Édouard Lalo’s 1877 Cello Concerto in D Minor, Anatoli Lyadov’s 1909 Legend for Orchestra The Enchanted Lake, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1925 Symphony No. 1 (possibly the greatest graduation exercise for a composition course ever written by a Leningrad Conservatory student).

The Youth Orchestra’s 100-plus musicians come from all over the Bay Area, ranging in age between 12 and 21, and here they are on the band’s 25th birthday, playing the work of the 19-year-old Shostakovich. Going those youthful figures one better, Classical Voice brought along an 8-year-old, to provide a voice for the Even Younger.

SFCV Associate Reviewer Marcus Weiss

Just a year ago, Marcus Weiss made his public writing debut as a reviewer. Now a veteran critic, he came along to provide a youthful perspective on the orchestra. Before quoting him in detail, let’s report his overall impressions: “Wagner: definitely; Lalo: not bad; Lyadov: pretty; Shostakovich: long, but OK; the whole concert: excellent, I want to hear more!”

To my own older and more critical ears, The Flying Dutchman flapped his wings with too much effort. The sound was big and bright, strings (led by a remarkable concertmaster, Hannah Tarley) and woodwinds hardworking and fearless, the brass rather muddling through, and the whole affair coming off as something you’d expect from “a” youth orchestra, not “the” SFS Youth Orchestra.

MARCUS ON WAGNER: “I had a feeling of fighting and stuff, a thunderstorm, loud, but not too loud.”

The performance history of the Lalo concerto is strange, similar to the ebbing and flowing popularity of several other 19th century French composers. It was virtually a concert-hall warhorse in Europe a few decades back, but in the United States, this pretty, melodic work is something of a rarity. Settling down after Wagner, the orchestra turned to a more reliable and cohesive performance, supporting well the soloist, Gugene Kang. This youthful veteran of the group is a significant violinist-turned-cellist, a no-nonsense musician with awesome concentration. Many cellists are put in front of an orchestra, but Kang is more than just a cellist: he’s a born soloist, with a powerful yet effortless musical presence. He fluently traversed passages both elegant and rhythmically exciting.

MARCUS ON LALO: “The music reminded me of a party, where people dance, in beautiful clothes. The cello [Kang] spoke of peace and happiness.”

An advance look at the program could make a listener consider the Liadov tone poem to be perhaps a throwaway among the larger works. But in fact The Enchanted Lake provided the most inspired playing of the concert, with the violins leading and sustaining a gorgeously quiet, shimmering sound, and the first violins and cellos shining brightly (to reprise starring roles shortly afterward, in the Shostakovich). The subtle, understated beauty of the piece prompted our young assistant to turn his attention to visual aspects of the event.

MARCUS ON LIADOV: “Before playing, the musicians start to tune their instruments and make some sort of music [tuning]. When the audience claps, the musicians tap their feet on the floor to make noise. Sometimes they flip the pages of their book of notes. Some lean back and forth from time to time.”

The Shostakovich symphony (“breaking the rules,” Shwartz said in his judiciously brief comments) still sounds “new” after 80 years. It got its full due from the Youth Orchestra, as the brass players finally came into their own, even though they still took a backseat to the other sections.

Strings and woodwinds got into a dazzling race with fast passages. Then, in instances of a miniature piano concerto, Preben Antonsen, 15, gave a percussive, hard-edged, exactly right performance that moved many a head in the audience in his direction. Here’s a young musician with fingers of steel and musicality of gold.

Among his many virtues, conductor Shwartz is clearly a master of the large form, keeping the gestalt of the symphony front and center, rather than getting bogged down in details (where, in fact, the devil resides, especially in youth orchestra performances). The finale’s sound and fury, supported by Carl Peterson’s mighty timpani, overwhelmed in a way that would have impressed Wagner himself, while leaving young Marcus Weiss still in deep contemplation of symphonic logistics:

MARCUS ON SHOSTAKOVICH: “Here’s what I notice looking at the stage. At some point, the music players look at the book of notes, and at another point, the players look at the conductor. At a certain point, the players all pick up their instruments at the same time. I also notice that some of the players move their feet back and forth. They do that sometimes during the music. Some of the players point their bows in the air at the same time. They do that when they are starting to play music.”

Truth is, I myself was looking toward the cello section during the Shostakovich, hearing some wonderful solo work that alternated with concertmaster Tarley and then played duets with her. Lacking both binoculars and 20/20 vision, however, I can only guess that it was Kang, assuming his place as principal cellist, never mind his exalted soloist role just before the intermission. It must have been Kang, and Youth Orchestra members must be the hardest-working, least ego-driven musicians around. May they thrive for many more quarter centuries.

(Janos Gereben is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice. His e-mail address is janosg@gmail.com.)

©2006 Janos Gereben, all rights reserved