|
|
 |
| |
| |
 The 160-strong orchestra displayed enthusiasm and discipline in an immensely challenging programme
|
Musical youth has a sound future
REVIEW - NATIONAL YOUTH ORCHESTRA OF GREAT BRITAIN
Roundhouse
LIVING in Camden, it’s hard not to be charmed by its unique character – the markets, the neo-punks, the relentless bustle of its weird and wonderful counter-culture.
But for all that, there is a murkier side of things that can’t be ignored. Leaving the office on a drizzly Friday evening, the walk up Camden High Street towards Chalk Farm sums up every stereotype of young people in Britain today.
Drugs dealers co-mingle with the seemingly oblivious PCSOs, stumbling drunks create an oppressive, intimidating air while gangs of youths congregate on street corners, challenging you to dare to make eye contact.
So by the time you arrive at the Roundhouse, you’re not in a ‘classical’ frame of mind. And you’re certainly not in the mood to lend a sympathetic ear to the whims of 160 teenagers for the evening. Your 10-minute walk through the streets has left a taint, and convinced you, like so many times before, that there is little hope for the aimless, troubled youth of today.
The atmosphere inside the Roundhouse, however, couldn’t be more different, because Friday saw the first concert in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain’s winter season.
The culmination of a week’s intensive rehearsal, the NYO performance – the first by a symphony orchestra since the venue reopened in 2005 – was nothing short of inspirational.
The 160-strong orchestra – 70 of whom were performing with the NYO for the first time – displayed an enthusiasm and discipline that belies everything we are so easily led to believe about young people.
Among the NYO’s number there was no negative attitude, no misbehavior, no sense that this was a group of young people looking for the easy way out, unwilling to apply themselves to a collective goal, albeit an artistic one.
From start to finish they took on an immensely challenging programme – Britten’s Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suites 1 and 2 and conductor James MacMillan’s Symphony: Vigil – with a passion and flair that was staggering both for their young age and relative inexperience.
The energy was relentless, with the orchestra, when firing on all cylinders in the Interludes, a sight to behold from the Roundhouse’s upper circle.
It wasn’t all crescendos blasted out with youthful abandon, however, and the musicians showed a lightness of touch in MacMillan’s Vigil that would impress had it come from a professional orchestra.
Like any group of youths, it was in their nature to err at times – to lose their place, to fall behind their peers, to be, perhaps, overwhelmed by the events going on around them. But this cannot and should not be faulted, for all it takes in these situations is the steady, corrective hand of the conductor to steady their course.
The only problem with the night was that the NYO didn’t receive the standing ovation they certainly deserved.
But watching the orchestra’s members flood down the steps of the Roundhouse after the performance, instruments under their arms, to be greeted by the beaming smiles and congratulations of friends and family, it was clear that these young people had had a night to remember, a night of which everyone involved can justly feel proud.
Stepping back out into the streets of Camden, now some three hours further along in its nightly ritual of dead-end drunkenness, it seemed clear that it is not youth itself that is to blame, but our lack of faith in it.
The menacing air of gangs of youths, in Camden and around the country, is a result of unchallenged boredom and a lack of guidance – nothing more.
Given the opportunity, who knows which of the local hoodies could be exultantly blaring a trumpet from the gallery of the Roundhouse?
It is up to everyone – from parents and councillors to siblings and friends – to rise to this challenge and, when necessary, to guide the wayward youth back into the fold, like a conductor making eye-contact and emphasising the beat to a violinist gone astray.
www.nyo.org.uk |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
