Talk about a feast. By the time we arrived at the main course – Stravinsky’s The Firebird in its original 1910 incarnation – the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain had served up 14 toothsome appetisers. Yet this concert never felt overlong or piecemeal, a testament to judicious programming and immeasurable reserves of youthful adrenaline.
The preliminary performances took place in the Festival Hall’s ballroom. With audience and players virtually on top of each other, it was a chance to witness up close the spirit of cheeky camaraderie that ignites this orchestra. Highlights included Adam Gorb’s Omaggio a Giovanni, a tribute to Venetian composer Giovanni Gabrieli mingling modernist dissonances with flickering Renaissance fanfares, and Simmy Singh’s arrangement of Punch Brothers’ Flippen, a bluesy stomp that felt like the Welsh equivalent of a Scottish ceilidh.
Upstairs in the hall, the first half opened with Jessie Montgomery’s Source Code, a lament for strings with melodies rooted in Black spirituals. Lush harmonies, shot through with spasms of loss, resonated in a deeply felt account. Judith Weir’s Fresh Air followed, a showcase for woodwinds that included a bubbly bevy of flutes, a phalanx of bassoons playing in their grumbly lowest registers, and the joyful noise of massed oboes.
Three brass choirs finessed Simon Dobson’s Incandenza, while Andy Akiho’s Karakurenai, performed mid-auditorium by seven percussionists, bristled with shimmering cross-rhythms. Then came three pieces devised by the NYO Associates, an inventive group who create original music for NYO concerts, including the haunting Petrichor. Performed aloft in balcony boxes, it was an atmospheric triumph, an evocative cross between a Shaker hymn and the last post.
As for The Firebird, with 170 young people on stage and conductor Andrew Gourlay’s gift for musical storytelling, it was a dramatic tour de force. The string sound was rock-solid, and there were distinguished solos from clarinet, flute and especially horn leading into the earth-shattering finale. The arrival of the demonic Koschei and the white-knuckle Infernal Dance were dazzlingly coloured. And how refreshing to watch regular kids, passionate about classical music, entertaining a crowd that included everyone from a reasonably behaved baby to the master of the King’s music.
