Music / Pure Energy, AYO Young Symphonists. At Snow Concert Hall, October 5. Reviewed by GRAHAM McDONALD.

This concert was the culmination of a week of rehearsals and workshops by a symphony orchestra made up of 12-18-year-old musicians from around the country, essentially high school/college students.

The Young Symphonists (and what a clunky name that is) is part of the Australian Youth Orchestra program, and the gateway for young musicians to the wider program of AYO activities such as the flagship Australian Youth Orchestra itself.

The program was book-ended by two works from the standard, albeit Russian, orchestral repertoire, Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain and a selection of excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. In between were three charming compositions, two from contemporary Australian composers and one from Welsh composer Grace Williams.

The first of these was Maria Grenfell’s River, Mountain, Sky, a music impression of the Tasmanian landscape, full of little musical ideas worked through one by one with lush brass chords and repetitive patterns from the strings. This was a marked contrast to Holly Harrison’s Splinter, opening with a cacophonous chord and full of little pieces of music humour such as a bass bassoon solo and a sweet duet from the harp and a triangle.

Williams’ Fantasia on Welsh Nursery Tunes dates from 1940 and an orchestral mix of nursery rhymes and folk songs which was just not as interesting as the other two more modern works. The orchestration was clever, but there is only so much interest in nursery rhyme tunes.

Conductor Carlo Antonioli’s athletic and kinetic conducting created a most remarkable concert. This was orchestral playing of a very high standard, with close to 60 musicians on stage, each section working tightly together and delightfully in tune. The Tchaikovsky selections allowed some impressive solo passages, with the first violinist and cellist charmingly featured in one piece and some expressive and lyrical trumpet playing from a young woman in another.

This was a concert that exceeded all expectations from a group of teenage musicians. There are professional orchestras out there that are not up this standard. It bodes well for the future of orchestral music in this country.