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Music

Australian Youth Orchestra with Hélène Grimaud ★★★★

by •
ABR Arts • 08 August 2016
Music

Australian Youth Orchestra with Hélène Grimaud ★★★★

by •
ABR Arts • 08 August 2016

Everyone loves a youth orchestra. All that young talent and enthusiasm oozing from the stage energises and captivates. An audience comprising a good number of proud parents and friends lends a sense of heightened anticipation.

Saturday night's concert marked the homecoming of the Australian Youth Orchestra from its recent tour to Europe and China. Conducted by Manfred Honeck, the program comprised Carl Vine's Celebrare Celeberrime, Ravel's Piano Concerto in G (with soloist Hélène Grimaud), and Mahler's Symphony No. 1, Titan. This was a well-chosen and challenging program. The works give the audience a taste of all sections of the orchestra: there is not much thumb twiddling for percussionists and brass-players. It is also a risky program because there is great scope to show up weaknesses in technique, not just within sections but also with individual players.

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Paul Watt

Paul Watt is a senior lecturer in musicology at Monash University. His research interests including musical biography, criticism and nineteenth-century music and intellectual culture. His is the author of The Regulation and Reform of Music Criticism in Nineteenth Century England (2018) and Ernest Newman: A critical biography (2017).

Leave a comment
Paul Watt

Paul Watt is a senior lecturer in musicology at Monash University. His research interests including musical biography, criticism and nineteenth-century music and intellectual culture. His is the author of The Regulation and Reform of Music Criticism in Nineteenth Century England (2018) and Ernest Newman: A critical biography (2017).

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Comments (2)

  • In any closely focused review there is always the risk of missing a full canvass while distracted by the brush strokes, and this fussy response seems to miss the joy and enthusiasm of the occasion experienced by performers and audience alike. Any flaws identified during Paul Watt’s reconnaissance were quite irrelevant to the success of the program and of no interest to an audience that responded with elation and extended applause (not mentioned by the reviewer). The AYO is a part-time training orchestra that can often put full-time professionals to shame in its enduring commitment to higher achievement, as it did in this accomplished performance, and we in the stalls were thrilled also by the work of the two extraordinarily talented international musicians who shared the podium with them. The entire concert was a genuine triumph for all concerned, and it was churlish to find fault with the encores by Grieg and Khachaturian.
    Posted by Richard and Julie Gorrell
    15 August 2016
  • It is perhaps indicative of the types of concert-goers in our two major capitals that while the critic (and one supposes the audience) tut-tutted at the 'silly acrobatics' of the players in Saturday's AYO welcome home concert in Melbourne, their Sydney counterparts on Monday at the Opera House were thrilled by the hijinks of the kids in the band spinning their double basses and violins and brass leaping up at appropriate moments for their sections. Unlace those stays Melbourne! And be grateful that at least ninety-seven young Aussie musicians are providing hope for the future of serious music in this country.
    Posted by Leo Schofield
    09 August 2016

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