On the face of it, the National Youth Orchestra of Wales’s concert of Smetana, Richard Strauss and Shostakovich looked like safe programming. Yet for young musicians whose orchestral involvement has been limited by the disruptions of the pandemic, nothing is safe or straightforward. And given that the Strauss selection was his Four Last Songs – mostly concerned with reflections on the end of life – and that Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony dates from the Stalin era with all the ominous resonances of Russia now, these youngsters would have been getting to grips not simply with the music’s technical demands but also with much grittier lessons about humanity and history.
St David’s Hall was the culmination of a four-concert tour across Wales with conductor Carlo Rizzi, and there was a distinct sense that the experience of having played in such different venues in Lampeter, Bangor and Pembrokeshire’s St David’s Cathedral now found the orchestra in peak performance mode and revelling in it. In Smetana’s symphonic poem from Má Vlast, the rippling sources of the Vltava had an easy flow, progressing naturally to the tumultuous rush of the St John’s rapids, part of the composer’s initial inspiration.
