The critics agree: YO is a hit in Berlin !

Not only did the appearance by the SFS Youth Orchestra get the big three newspapers of Berlin out to the Philharmonie for review, the critics all agreed, the concert was phenomenal.  Included in the reviews, legendary Berlin critic Klaus Geitel, who has been reviewing concerts in Berlin since the days of Wilhelm Furtwangler.  The usually hard critics of this musical capital who see the best of the best on a nightly basis had come to a consensus:  the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra belongs to the world's elite.

July 5, 2012

Young Orchestra Is Brilliant in Early Works 


Klaus Geitel

Berlin’s summer music scene traditionally belongs to youth, such as the guest performances during the Young Euro Classic Festival at the Konzerthaus, which begins at the end of July. The festival was just preceded by a concert at the Philharmonie, however, the likes of which I have never heard from a young orchestra. The appearance by the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra was a highlight of the past season. Under its Music Director, Donato Cabrera, it achieved a real triumph.

Lars Vogt, the thrilling soloist in Edvard Grieg’s A minor Piano Concerto, made a major contribution to this success. He presented the work, once extremely popular, then unjustly relegated to oblivion, in its former splendor. He succeeded in reconciling the virtuosically impressive and romantically sensitive elements of the work, subordinating emotion and intellect to ten fingers and combining Grieg’s Nordic majesty with the indispensable trace of musical worldliness that characterizes his work. Grieg was only 25, approximately the same age as the orchestra members from San Francisco, when he composed his piano concerto. Perhaps that is what made the interpretation so moving and electrifying, further inflamed by the perceptiveness and exuberant insight of the marvelous pianist. Lars Vogt continually added vitality, youthful freshness, vigilance, and energy to his performance, along with an aesthetic sense in his fingertips that is rare today.

The concert opened with the quiet scampering of John Adams’s almost half-hour-long Shaker Loops – music with stamina, ingenuity, and restraint, which a single coughing fit could have spoiled. That did not happen, thank goodness, and Adams’s concert piece retained its subtle intimacy.

Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony provided the wonderfully showy conclusion of the concert. It can also rightly be called an early work – Mahler was just 28 at its premiere. Perhaps early works should generally be played by youth orchestras, in which naturalness, enthusiasm, and the hope of a great future resonate.

July 5, 2012

High Drama: San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra at the Philharmonie

Strictly speaking, youth orchestras cannot do anything wrong. They cover up any possible excessive demands with enthusiasm. That was also the case with the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, but it was unnecessary in view of the brilliant performance the orchestra, which was founded in 1981, gave under Donato Cabrera at the Philharmonie. 

The excellent, homogeneous string section, from which individual colors continually emerged, was already apparent during the minimalistically vibrating Shaker Loops by John Adams. Complex syncopated rhythms turned up again in the folk elements of Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor. Soloist Lars Vogt displayed perfect unity with the orchestra, whether in lyrical restraint or explosive climaxes. Only his extreme, at times murmuring, at times vehemently accentuated dynamics propelled the work back to the salon a little too much. 

In Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony, on the other hand, drama in detail is called for. Cabrera depicted the complexity of the worlds evoked in the sparse treble lines of the Adams work at the opening, the mysterious calls of the distant trumpets, the lighthearted “Wunderhorn” music, and its catastrophic breakdowns. The funeral march was oppressively heavy yet always transparent, and the finale, with its breathtaking solos, was world-weary, despairing, and consoling. Frenzied cheers.

July 5, 2012

GUSTAV MAHLER AT THE BEACH

San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra gives early concert of Young Euro Classics Season

The Young Euro Classics Festival doesn't begin in earnest until July 27, but on Tuesday evening, it offered an early opening concert at the Philharmonie.  The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra was the guest and immediately reduced popular notions of the capabilities of youth orchestras to absurdity.  This was playing at such levels of musicality known only to professional orchestras. And in this case, professional means:  this orchestra doesn't play themselves into the ground, without regard to casualties - as do most youth orchestras.  This next generation orchestra from San Francisco is instead always focused on a unified sound, no one breaks from the group in any way that would damage the ensemble playing.    In some passages it might have sounded at times a bit too detached, one almost misses the wildness of youth. And isn't this what one expects to hear from a youth orchestra that one doesn't from a professional one?

Doesn't matter.  On this evening one is impressed by youthful perfection - from a silvery clear sound of the ensemble.  No mistakes mar this tonal landscape, which led to a wonderfully good natured and brightly shining Mahler's First Symphony.  It's as if the eternally suffering Gustav Mahler had finally found his peace on the beach in the Californian sun sporting a perfect tan.  One would think this polished performance has a lot to do with their Music Director Donato Cabrera, who organized the Symphony cleanly and down to the last detail, but only rarely called for the maximum from his musicians.  One was left with the impression that we had not even seen the full capacity of this orchestra.

In the first half, the musicians showed their rhythmic discipline and elegant dexterity in John Adams' Shaker Loops which drove forward with relentless precision. In Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto, on the other hand was evocative of a water color painting:  elegant lines, soft colors.  With Lars Vogt, the piece had a soloist that took this Youth Orchestra seriously, not insisting the authority of the solo but working with them almost like a chamber musician. The subtle accompanying of the SFSYO was a perfect match.  The Piano Concerto turned into a marvelous collaborative project: flexible in tempo yet stylistically secure, dreamy but not otherworldly.