Photo courtesy of QYO
Queensland Youth Orchestras 2015 Finale concert featured the work of 500 plus young players across the organisation. Along with the pre-eminent Queensland Youth Symphony, we heard the Big Band, Junior String Ensemble, Wind Ensemble, Wind Symphony and the two Youth Orchestras strut their stuff.
The quality of playing from orchestral musicians as young as seven years rising to early 20’s was overall impressive and generally of a high standard. Exciting and risky repertoire, including new Australian compositions, is to be commended though some seemed ambitious for musicians’ existing skill levels.
Rafael Karlen conducted the Big Band’s world premiere of Weathered Smile which he composed with lyrics by singer, Kelsey Giarola. This gentle, lyrical piece contrasted nicely with Pat Metheny’s challenging work, Have You Heard, with good solos from brass and percussion despite complex rhythms and harmonic changes.
The Junior String Ensemble captured the essence of Spanish flamenco in Albeniz’s Sevilla, specially arranged for strings by conductor Chen Yang. Rachel Merton’s newly-commissioned, How the Sun Loved the Moon, was sensitively interpreted with expressive legato that was astonishingly competent, given the age of most of the players.
Latin-American inspired music from Reed’s El Camino Real was the choice of the Wind Ensemble, under the secure baton of David Law. The Ensemble demonstrated great agility, this passionate music offering excellent solos for horn, trumpet, tuba and oboe in particular.
Warwick Potter conducted the Wind Symphony in Bennett’s suite of Old American Dances, an entertaining pot-pourri of American dance tunes from the 1940’s. Potter’s conducting style was so laid-back it seemed to lack energy. While all three jazz pieces had verve and the soloists played confidently, one felt that more could have been elicited from these talented players.
QYO 3 offered an arrangement of Star Trek Through the Years by Calvin Custer conducted by Bradley Voltz. Music this well-known needs accurate ringing brass solos and, unfortunately having commenced unconvincingly, the work rarely seemed to reach the Hollywood-pizazz level required. It was clearly a stretch for the current skills of QYO 3, as was the QYO 2’s rendition of Rossini’s ever-popular Thieving Magpie Overture. While conductor Sergei Korschmin valiantly kept the tempi brisk and the rhythms light and frothy, with accurate drum and percussion rolls and rushing strings’ scales, other instruments struggled to manage the demands of the piece with mixed results.
It was ultimately up to Maestro John Curro, in showcasing the Queensland Youth Symphony with extracts from one of their signature works, Stravinsky’s The Firebird, to demonstrate the power of his collective orchestra with music-making that was both dynamic, confident and highly professional. Curro has the ability to bring the best from his young players in the most challenging of repertoire; The Firebird being just that.
2016 will be the 50th anniversary of the birth of the Queensland Youth Orchestra movement, also celebrating John Curro’s commencement as Music Director. To celebrate this milestone, a number of acclaimed alumni will return as soloists including Paul Dean performing the Finzi Clarinet Concerto; the Barber Violin Concerto with Dene Olding; Stephen Emmerson as piano soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 and Diana Doherty performing Richard Strauss’s Oboe Concerto.
The four major works for 2016 are no less impressive – the Organ Symphony by Saint-Saëns in March; Shostakovich’s B minor 6th Symphony in May; the massive Te Deum of Berlioz in August and, finally, the 50th Anniversary Alumnus Orchestra, 150-strong and including many Australian leading professionals and successful expatriates, to perform Mahler’s 5th Symphony in December.
It promises to be a wonderful year of great music-making from the QYO.
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
QYO Finale
Queensland Youth Symphony and Queensland Youth Orchestras
Conductors: John Curro AM MBE; Rafael Karlen; Chen Yang; David Law; Warwick Potter; Dr Bradley Voltz and Sergei V Korschmin
Concert Hall, QPAC
Saturday 31 October 2015
