Special to the Town Crier
Concert review
Imagine the temerity of a youth symphony orchestra conductor programming a work as harmonically unique and dense, melodically evasive and rhythmically challenging as Prokofiev's "Fifth Symphony" and the improbability of his charges, ages 12 to 18, pulling it off.
But that's what happened March 28 at Cupertino's Flint Center when the California Youth Symphony, under the direction of Leo Eylar, tackled this modern work written in the Soviet Union during the darkest days of World War II.
How did they do?
On a scale of 1 to 10, by my reckoning, they did an 8.5 and that is incredibly good for a youth orchestra by any measure.
But why should I be surprised? Since the first time they knocked me out of my seat with one of the best performances of Richard Strauss' "Don Juan" I'd ever heard, I have been convinced that next to the Redwood Symphony, an almost professional adult group, they are the best on the Peninsula.
This performance reconfirmed that opinion. I had to remind myself constantly that these are teen-agers.
The brass, as usual, were outstanding and individual woodwind section leaders did their work with a calm professionalism. I was particularly impressed with principal clarinetist Jinsue Choi, a student at Los Altos High School, who was able to penetrate the density of the harmonic structure with some outstanding lyrical solo work.
And principal flutist Irene Lang was flawless in her demanding solo work.
The opening work, "The Overture to La Gazza Ladra," seems deceptively simple, but it actually could serve as a test piece for judging any orchestra. The scoring sweeps from bowing and wind instrument work of the softest and most delicate nature to the most bombastic fortes imaginable, can sweep listeners of their feet.
Of course, much of this goodness is due to Eylar, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated composer and guest conductor with numerous professional symphony orchestras. He is a conductor of the first rank, with a clear, controlled and uncompromising baton beat.
I have mixed feelings about the afternoon's soloist, 17-year-old Carlos Avila, who was the winner in the piano division of the 1998 CYS Young Artist Competition and performed the "Piano Concerto No. 1" by Sergei Rachmaninov.
This is a concerto that doesn't really say much compared to Rachmaninov's incredibly popular "Second Concerto" and his finger-busting "Third Concerto," and it didn't really move me. Avila did give it a worthy reading, though.
I need to acknowledge that he has a fluid, rapid and crystalline technique in the fast and heavy passages and excellent lyrical control in the slower passages, which bodes well for him in the competitive professional performing ranks. However, his body language is bush league.
I became more concerned about whether his leaning back at a 45-degree angle and looking at the ceiling would cause him to fall backwards off the piano bench than the music he was performing.
Finishing off heavy passages with a wide sweep of the arms and head is also incredibly corny and terribly distracting from the music. The musical sounds should tell the story, not the body - that's for dancers.
Avila is young enough to shuck all those romantic Franz Liszt gestures, acquire stronger hands and concentrate on how today's first-rate piano performers control their bodies and send all their emotions into their instruments.