Exuberant, disciplined brilliance from our finest young musicians
‘Totally teenage orchestral brilliance” is one of the slogans of the National Youth Orchestra and, unlike many slogans, this one is completely true. But in addition to all the teenage brilliance on show here, the success of the NYO’s latest programme was due in no small measure to the Mexican conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto. Drawn from outside the usual pool of NYO conductors, Prieto came ideally equipped through his long experience of the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, and also stamped his mark on the programming.
Mexican composers are seldom heard in our halls, so it was good that this concert featured two of them. Silvestre Revueltas’s La Noche de los Mayas, a four-movement suite drawn from his music for the film of the same name, got things off to a raucous start – but, for all the uproarious energy of the music, the playing was highly disciplined. All four movements invoke the night in their titles, yet only the third ( Noche de Yucatán) is a sultry nocturne. An exotic, enlarged percussion section was put in the spotlight in the finale, which also calls for conch shells, and the score urges them to perform “con violencia”. No less colourful, the exuberantly played encore was another popular Mexican classic, Moncayo’s Huapango.
Shostakovich dominated the rest of the evening. Last year’s BBC Young Musician winner, Sheku Kanneh- Mason, returned to the scene of his victory with the same work, the Russian composer’s First Cello Concerto. Digging in with gripping attack, yet also plenty of nuance, he showed what a remarkable musician he already is, bringing otherworldly tone to the haunting slow movement and displaying mature musicianship in his handling of the extended cadenza. Unusually, the NYO played with reduced numbers here, and Prieto steered them with taut precision.
If the concerto sounds like a dance on Stalin’s grave, Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony was written under the threat of Stalin’s purges. It made an interesting counterweight to the two Mexican pieces, which span the time of Trotsky’s assassination in Mexico City. Composed exactly 80 years ago, the Fifth still hasn’t yielded all its secrets, and it was refreshing to hear a completely new generation play it as a straightforwardly strong symphony – one key to understanding it. Commanding its structure impressively, Prieto unleashed the NYO in a searing performance in which everyone gave their brilliant best.
Future NYO concerts: nyo.org.uk