Side by Side
For the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra, “side by side”
meant just that Tuesday morning (May 4) at Music Hall.
Seated stand by stand with the 95-member orchestra were corresponding members of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, with the CSYO players occupying the first chair positions. It was the annual joint concert of the two orchestras and with nearly 200 musicians onstage, by far the largest orchestra heard at Music Hall this year (or any year). It was also, as CSYO conductor/CSO assistant conductor Ken Lam told the audience, a chance to see CSO principals “turning pages for the students.” Co-concertmasters for the performance were the CSYO's Jacqueline Kitzmiller and Stephanie Zyzak.
The concert, always much anticipated by the young musicians,
gave them the opportunity to soak up inspiration from their professional
counterparts (many of whom are also their teachers) and to perform under the
baton of CSO music director Paavo Järvi.
Järvi and Lam shared the program, consisting of scenes from Prokofiev’s ballet “Romeo and Juliet” and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.
Soloist was CSYO principal cellist Ben Stoehr in the first
movement Elgar’s Cello Concerto.
A senior at Turpin High School in Anderson Township and winner of this
year’s CSYO concerto competition, Stoehr served notice that we will be hearing
more from him soon. His musicality was evident
in the opening Adagio of the Elgar, which he shaped with care and poignancy,
demonstrating a real ability to show what lies “behind the notes” (here the
aging composer’s despair over ill health and World War I). He
carried that forward in the contrasting, somewhat flippant Allegro molto that
followed.
Stoehr will enter the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston this fall as a cello performance major. Interestingly, he will study with former CSO principal cellist (1986-89) Desmond Hoebig.
Lam, whose own exceptional talents have benefited the orchestra considerably (and will continue next season), led his charges in an impressive performance of the Prokofiev excerpts. “Montagues and Capulets” had the ponderous swagger one associates with the feuding families of Verona, Lam giving it body language to match. “The Street Awakens” (Scene from act I) flew by, and “Death of Tybalt” was as murderous and violent as Lam told his listeners it would be. The final two notes were particularly brutal, as Lam indicated with a sharp, strenuous cutoff.
Järvi led the Finale of the Shostakovich. It was a performance the CSYO musicians are
unlikely to forget, since Järvi called for an interpretation vividly expressive of the composer’s ambiguity.
Instead of sounding genuinely heroic, as the Soviet authorities expected and as it was actually received at its 1937 premiere, the music had a feeling of
(literally) drummed up excitement. This
was clearest at the end, where CSO timpanist Patrick Schleker and the CSYO's Natania Hoffman on bass drum beat the daylights out of their
instruments.
By contrast earlier in the
movement, Järvi brought the 120 strings down to a level of softness that
expressed the composer’s veiled sorrow at Stalinist repression.
In attendance at the concert were many of the Youth Orchestra’s fellow students. When Lam asked how many of them played in orchestras, a sea of hands went up, suggesting that music education has not vanished from area schools and that the CSO is doing its part to nurture it.
Founded in 1964 by former CSO music director Max Rudolf, the CSYO is open to students in grades 9-12 from throughout tristate area (southwestern Ohio, southeastern Indiana and northern Kentucky). Lam invited them to audition for the CSYO (auditions take place in August).
For information, call the CSO education department at (513) 744-333, or visit www.cincinnatisymphony.org