Of old masters and young musicians

Once again the Asian Youth Orchestra has landed on our shores to serve Manila’s music enthusiasts a heady draught of vintage classics by the masters. On two successive evenings at the CCP Main Theater, the 103 instrumentalists, who comprise the ensemble, intoxicated their audience with masterworks by Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Glinka, Mendelssohn and Dvorak, all of which servings their listeners, thirsting for classical music, drank to the lees.

The first concert opened most auspiciously with the Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92, by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).

It is generally known that music springs from two sources: dance and song. The first is generated basically by rhythm, the second is engendered by melody. Beethoven’s Seventh pulses with the rhythms of the dance. Wagner, who was not known for being vocal about his appreciation for the works of rival composers, did not begrudge the older composer of praise when he exclaimed that this particular symphony was "the apotheosis of the dance."

Music director and conductor Sergiu Comissiona led the AYO in a creditable reading of the Seventh. After a few tentative opening bars of the first movement, Poco sostenuto, the orchestra found its composure, and launched into the Vivace with ease. One could wish for a more soulful account of the Allegretto – for Beethoven had not created music that rivals the beauty of this passage except perhaps the slow movement of the Fifth. The last two movements, Presto and Allegro con brio, the orchestra delivered with the joy of young people that could not be anything less than infectious.

At about the time that Beethoven’s thoughts dwelt on his seventh symphony, a young lady who had met him wrote Goethe and quoted the words spoken to her by the composer: "When I open my eyes I must sigh, for… I must despise the world which does not know that music is a higher revelation than all of wisdom and philosophy, the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am the Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken…"

Listening to the AYO, one can sense the Dionysian spirit of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony dancing to the joy of life.

The highlight of the visit of the AYO, however, is the Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, Op. 43, by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943). This judgment rests not as much on the composition itself as on the performance of piano soloist Cecile Licad.

Despite the title, the piece is not really a rhapsody at all, but a set of variations on a theme. This theme is that of the "Caprice No. 24 in A minor" from Niccolo Paganini’s Opus 1. Against this material, the composer presents in opposition the traditional "Dies Irae" tune. It opens, surprisingly, not with the theme but with a variation in which the orchestra seems to be exploring the basic harmony of the work. Only after this brief prelude – like a drop of wine to which the wine-taster applies his tongue before he sips from the goblet – is the Paganini theme stated in full.

The 24 variations, never stooping to the prosaic and commonplace, run the gamut only from the novelty to the totally unexpected, along the way exploring the possibilities of the keyboard and the ensemble within the framework of the theme.

The work is a brilliant tour de force with awesome challenges that test the virtuosity of soloist and orchestra. Licad meets these challenges with incredible aplomb, her fingers hardening to steel or softening to velvet as the score requires; and her expressive power as icy as a Siberian glacier or as fiery as a Baltic sun in midsummer. When a moonlighting critic is stunned by the witchery on the ivory keys of Licad, can he do more than wax poetic?

Even the young musicians of the AYO will have to hone their craft for many more moons – age the wine of their talent in the cellar of experience and painstaking practice before they can rise bubbling with pride to fill the wine cup of the connoisseur.

After Licad’s Rachmaninoff, anything else could only be anti-climactic, even the suite from The Firebird of Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971). At any rate, the concluding number of the concert afforded the AYO the chance to display the talents of its members – individually in passages that highlighted solo instruments and other portions that focused on families of instruments. And indeed, Stravinsky’s ballet music, rich in the range of its tone colors, displayed in full measure the current level of attainment of the fledgling orchestra, and one must admit that it passes the wine-taster’s test admirably.

The second concert opened with the lively account of the Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla by Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804-1857). The work by "the father of Russian music" employs thematic materials from the opera inspired by a poem by Pushkin. The score, rich in atmospheric-pictorial colors that recreate the sounds and sights of a romantic tale of olden times, was given a thrilling account by Maestro Comissiona and the AYO.

The main feature of the evening was the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 64, by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) with soloist Leila Josefowicz. This concerto which embodies the romantic spirit of the 19th century is among the best of its genre.

Josefowicz made her strongest impression in the first movement, Allegro molto appassionata. From her 1739 Ebersolt Guarnerius de Gesu violin she drew all the pathos, all the yearning, of a grieving heart in the statement of the first theme. In the composer’s own cadenza enclosed by the development and the recapitulation, she made a stunning display of virtuosity that left her listeners breathless with awe.

The Andante and the Allegretto of the inner movements tended to bog down, alas, and only in the Allegro molto vivace of the finale did Josefowicz lift the performance of the concerto to a state not unlike that of a nymph romping with a faun among the grapes, drunk with the spirit of the vine.

The concert concluded with the Symphony No. 8 in G, Op. 88, by Bohemian composer Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904). Although the symphony is not as well known as the Ninth, From the New World, it brims with lovely melodies inspired by folksong and pulsates with the rhythms of Slavonic dances.

Particularly beautiful is the Allegretto grazioso, in which a poignant melody in a minor mode, sweet in its sadness, is borne by a gently swaying triple meter. Even if the reading of Dvorak and the other composers by the AYO is perceived to be academic, it is nonetheless of high quality which their mentors including Maestro Comissiona may well be proud of.

Trust the young musicians of the Asian Youth Orchestra – young men and women from China, Taipei, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – to bring the joy of classical music to their ports of call. To their exceptional talents and high ideals, we offer a libation.

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