Hot on the heels of the National Youth Orchestra’s Prom, here was another outstanding student ensemble: an orchestra recruited half-and-half from London’s Royal Academy of Music and New York’s Juilliard School, brought together by an exchange scheme funded by the RAM alumnus Elton John. Esa-Pekka Salonen took no prisoners as he whipped the players through three great 20th-century works.
They tore smartly into the start of Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements, an exacting work requiring pinpoint-precise playing, which it mostly received. It felt as though Salonen was working hard to maintain that precision, though, and the performance didn’t quite achieve the buoyancy that would have let the music dance. Here and elsewhere in the programme, some of the music’s bright colours felt a little muted. Perhaps, for all Salonen’s guidance, this is one area in which there is no substitute for years of experience – in the ability to play to a venue and, for the wind and brass principals in particular, to fill a hall of this size not only with the instrument’s sound but with its character.
