Review: New York Youth Symphony

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 15 March 2011 02:32; Written by Jack Angstreich

On the afternoon of Sunday, March 13th, 2011, I had the pleasure of enjoying the excellent musicians of the New York Youth Symphony perform, under the estimable direction of Ryan McAdams, at a concert mostly devoted to Russian composers, at Carnegie Hall.

Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, in the orchestration by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, is one of the most familiar works in the classical repertory. But it was a bracing -- and thrilling -- experience to hear the powerful original orchestration by Mussorgsky himself, as the opening piece in the program -- indeed this version received its New York premiere played by this very ensemble in 1983. One exciting element here was the stronger sense of the folk-music inspiration underlying the work's genesis than can be perceived in the Rimsky-Korsakov arrangement. The players sounded superb as they did, too, in the next piece performed, Sergei Prokofiev's extraordinary and delightful Overture on Hebrew Themes.

The New York Youth Symphony has a tradition of commissioning new works by young composers to be premiered at its concerts. On this program we heard the world premiere of Christopher Cerrone's haunting Still Life with Violin and Orchestra. The eccentric, up-and-coming virtuoso Hahn-Bin -- perhaps as much a performance-artist as an outstanding musician -- brought a flamboyant theatrical dimension to the space as he took the stage to play, exquisitely, the beautiful solo-violin line.

The concert concluded, triumphantly, with a rousing account of the great, unsettling masterpiece, the celebrated Fifth Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich.

New York Youth Symphony
Conducted by Ryan McAdams
Violin Solo by Hahn-Bin
Music of Modest Mussorgsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Christopher Cerrone, Dmitri Shostakovich

Carnegie Hall
57th Street at Seventh Avenue
New York City
March 13, 2011