Review: The Young Person's Future of Music
The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, NZSO National Youth Orchestra
Friday, July 14
Reviewer: Max Rashbrooke
The future of classical music is in safe hands, judging by Friday's night concert from the NZSO National Youth
Orchestra, the country's most talented young players. They had the advantage in this concert, of course, of working with
the highly talented British composer and conductor James MacMillan. Under his guidance they produced a sound that, apart
from an occasional hesitancy or lack of depth in the strings, could have been that of a professional outfit.
They were also the perfect conduit for a couple of premieres by young New Zealand composers. Celeste Oram's The Young People's Guide to the Orchestra was a wry and inventive tribute to growing up listening to the radio, complete with faked RNZ Concert audio, transistor
radios on stage, and the orchestra at one point filing off stage to play amongst the audience. There were a few too many
in-jokes about famous classical works, and it dragged a little at the end, but it was easily the most innovative thing
I've heard coming out of the NZSO set-up.
The same was true for Reuben Jellyman's ‘Vespro’, a gentle, elegant meditation on the Monteverdi Vespers. Reading the
descriptions for both the premieres, I had been worried they would be too backward looking, a search for something
comforting in a troubled world. But Jelleyman's piece in particular had a beautiful balance between drawing on tradition
and taking it forward.
Earlier on in the concert we had MacMillan's ‘Veni, Veni, Emmanuel’, played by rockstar percussionist Colin Currie. I
have to admit that – though it's no doubt a failing for a classical reviewer – I'm not so moved by heavily percussive
works, so I probably couldn't appreciate the skill on display. But I think anyone would have been moved in places by the
great emotional variety in this religious work, ranging from exaltation to quiet reverence, while Currie's studied
intensity was something to behold.
Finally, we had Britten's ‘Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra’, and again, the playing was generally excellent,
especially the bubbling clarinets and some really moving playing from the oboes, rightly singled out for applause at the
end. It was a fitting conclusion to a varied and enjoyable evening.
ENDS