WOW at Carnegie Hall
Youth Orchestras from Around the World
By: Susan Hall - Aug 10, 2024
Walking around New York City for the past few weeks, you can’t miss young people packing their instruments of choice. Entering a New York University dormitory near Union Square, a violinist explained that he was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and played with the Afghan Orchestra. Yet they are trained in Portugal. Their homeland is dangerous.
The 60 member Afghan orchestra members, supplemented by almost 30 members of the EU Orchestra, are led at Carnegie Hall by Tiago Moreira da Silva who heads their learning program in Portugal. As we chatted, I remarked that as an admirer of Marin Alsop. I’d never seen her conduct with such enthusiasm and detail as I had the night before leading the National Youth Orchestra of the US. Of course, with more seasoned musicians, you often have to conduct the work of a narcissistic stage director whose set is fun but has no relationship to the music. Leading orchestra musicians have to contend with the Boards’ budgets and musical chairs among the CEOs of orchestras. Mr. da Silva pointed out that these young musicians are focused on giving their all. Conductors respond in kind.
The series of WOW (World Orchestra Week) concerts at Carnegie opened with Teddy Abrams, maestro of the Louisville Orchestra and winner of Musical America’s 2022 Conductor of the Year award. He conducted the NYO2 Orchestra.
A pattern was set. The young orchestra members marched down the Carnegie aisles and onto the stage. I asked a young man bearing one of the more unusual instruments if it was a bass clarinet. He was surprised and delighted that someone knew what he was playing.
Another signature of these performers was a leap or two to punctuate a phrase. All the NYO2 strings jumped up as they played some phrases from Bernsteain’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. A double bass player twirled her instrument –a real feat of gingerly management. When Jean-Yves Thibuadet performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, he too played the piano standing while instrumentalists did their now familiar and completely delightful jump. Marin Alsop joined in. Exuberance is the mood. The music is wonderful.
Up in Carnegie Hall's second floor museum, a video of Fritz Kreisler playing was energetic but soundless on the wall. A young violinist from the EU Orchestra, which played Mahler’s Second Symphony under Ivan Fischer, was singing to the fingering, providing the sound as people waited to go into the restrooms at intermission.
Hope and Robert F. Smith are the lead backers of the WOW week. Mr. Smith, chair of the Carnegie Board, is committed to giving young people internship and apprentice jobs and guiding them into the larger world. Supporting these young musicians is a perfect way to accomplish his mission.
You can’t help but feel that if this is the future of music, the future can’t come soon enough.