by Mike Telin
A challenge in programming for a young orchestra as talented as the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra is choosing repertoire that teaches them how to be a better 21st century ensemble while also being enjoyable to play.
On Sunday, November 12 at 3:00 pm at Severance Music Center, Daniel Reith will lead the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra in two well-known works, and two of Reith’s recent discoveries. Tickets are available online.
The concert will open with Johannes Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture. The work was written as a tribute to the University of Breslau, which had awarded him an honorary doctorate in philosophy. And like all good students, Reith said he was happy that the young musicians of COYO are such a curious group.
“Telling them about the origins of the piece really caught their attention,” the conductor said during a Skype conversation. “ I thought it would be fun to do a piece that contains themes of famous student songs of Brahms’ time. And explaining the background to the song about a little fox who is annoying his parents by his curiosity, really fascinated them.”
The afternoon will continue with María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir’s Oceans, a work Reith said he discovered through lucky coincidence. “I was searching for pieces on the topic of water for one of our educational concerts last season. Sadly it didn’t fit that program, but it was a wonderful discovery that I thought would be a great piece for COYO.”
What are the duties of an assistant conductor of a major orchestra? “Every day is an experience,” Daniel Reith said during a recent telephone conversation. Since assuming that position with The Cleveland Orchestra this season, Reith has had a lot on his plate. In addition to his involvement with numerous educational activities, he has led the Orchestra’s family concerts and the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Concert. Earlier this month he stepped in on very short notice for an ailing Klaus Mäkelä to lead three subscription concert performances.
An immigrant mother, struggling with her sense of identity, makes a plea to her new homeland in the hopes that her newborn daughter will have an easier time navigating it. This sentiment, presented in musical form, was especially fitting for a concert on Mother’s Day — not to mention one with a high percentage of mothers in the audience.
When Moonhee Kim’s violin teacher said he wanted her to learn the Prokofiev Violin Concerto, she was hoping he would say the second one. Of the composer’s two concerti for the instrument, No. 2 is more commonly performed, and it was the one Kim was most familiar with. But Concerto No. 1 was what he had in mind — and as it turns out, that was the perfect choice.
Over the years, audiences have had the privilege of hearing many outstanding performances by winners of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra’s annual concerto competition. But on Sunday, February 20, the sizable crowd at Severance Music Center witnessed nothing short of musical magic during Dasara Beta’s brilliant performance of Alexander Arutiunian’s Trumpet Concerto.
Think of works for trumpet and orchestra, and two pieces immediately come to mind. “When I tell someone that I’m playing a concerto, they always say — are you playing Haydn or Hummel?” Dasara Beta said during a recent telephone conversation. “This is a pretty popular piece for trumpet players, but if you don’t play the trumpet, you might not know it.”
After a long hiatus, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra is back in full swing. “I’m so excited,” COYO music director Vinay Parameswaran said during a recent telephone conversation. “I couldn’t wait to be back in our beautiful hall with the young musicians — we’ve all been waiting for this for way too long.”
It came as no surprise that the March 1 Severance Hall concert by the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra Youth Chorus was an excellent affair. Leading fine performances of music mostly off the beaten track, conductor Vinay Parameswaran helped prove that gloomy predictions of classical music performance fading into oblivion are misplaced. The audience was large and enthusiastic — I suspect with many rightfully proud family members.