The National , UAE
May 18 2009
Life-affirming notes
Gemma Champ
Last Updated: May 17. 2009 5:29PM UAE / May 17. 2009 1:29PM GMT
As the State Youth Orchestra of Armenia launched energetically into
their third encore to the cheers and stomping of an enthusiastic
audience at the Cultural Foundation on Saturday night, one was
reminded of the many reasons that seeing young musicians give their
all can be such a life-affirming event. These youngsters, in their
late teens and early 20s, are all students of the Yerevan Komitas
State Conservatory, led by the conductor and violinist and all-round
impresario Sergey Smbatyan (born in 1987, if you can believe it). That
means two things: firstly, they are all blindingly talented, and
secondly, they are as yet unbowed by the difficulties and pains of
competing in a career as a professional musician ` optimistic, in
other words.
And boy, did it show. In the surprisingly few moments during which the
music did, perhaps, lack something in finesse or accuracy, there was
always the real passion and vigour of youth to make up for it. That’s
one of the other joys of hearing young musicians: because they are not
yet professionals, one can temporarily suspend those overly critical
faculties that allow us to complain about a badly tuned trombone or
sigh at an unbalanced string section, instead simply becoming immersed
in a wave of music created by uncynical, talented kids.
There was, it has to be said, a little trepidation before the concert
began: the programme, not published before the event, looked extremely
long, with two multi-movement items and three arias in the first half
alone. Entrance was free, though, which produced an audience that was
informal, mixed, ready to be pleased and, it seemed, genuinely excited
about the music. As one Moroccan listener called Kamal said to me: `I
didn’t know the concert was on, but I just wandered in because it was
free, and it’s really wonderful.’
As it turned out, what was indeed a very long programme flew by all
too fast, even with those three encores and two extra folk songs
movingly sung a cappella by the talented soprano Hasmik
Torosyan. Smbatyan chased the string orchestra along at a cracking
pace, starting with a pleasingly lyrical Serenade for Strings by
Tchaikovsky, in which his control of the orchestra was impressive:
those regal first chords, which could easily be suffused with
sentimentality, were ostensibly restrained, almost vibrato-free, yet
subtly revealing some genuine underlying emotion.
The orchestra’s discipline was showcased again in the second piece, a
five-movement Concerto Barocco for violin and string orchestra, by the
midcentury Armenian composer Edgar Hovhannisyan. Smbatyan took the
violin solo, standing in front of the orchestra and conducting with a
flick of his bow and a nod of his head, yet even in this rhythmically
complex and harmonically dissonant work, with its shades of midcareer
Shostakovich, the strings held it together and produced some exquisite
solos from among the cellos, violas and supporting harpsichord.
This also showed another of those great benefits of a young orchestra:
with the idealism of youth and without the desperate need to appeal to
market forces with easy-on-the-ear classics, the ensemble has the
chance to introduce the audience to music they may never have heard
and may never hear again ` a rare occurrence in a world of popular
crossover artists and recording labels.
As was to be expected, the Hovhannisyan had a mixed response, with its
modernity appealing to perhaps only half of the listeners (chatting,
murmuring and phone-tapping is a dead giveaway), though the whole
audience was good-natured enough to applaud vigorously, safe in the
knowledge that the next song was one of Puccini’s most famous arias, O
Mio Babbino Caro, from the opera Gianni Schicchi. Once one was able to
overlook the soprano Torosyan’s violent blue dress ` so skintight and
glossy that it showed every swelling of the lung, every flicker of the
diaphragm ` it became evident that the 26-year-old has some serious
talent. Her sweet turn and winning expressions worked well in this
pretty aria, in the slightly boring Vocalize by Babajanyan and in the
lively waltz Il Bacio.
The second half rattled along, with the slight but cheery Symphony No
24 in B flat by Mozart (during which a few brass, woodwind and
percussion finally got to join the party), Torosyan’s return for
Verdi’s aria Elena’s Bolero from I Vespri Siciliani and the
technically fiendish but well-executed Night Queen from the Magic
Flute, and a finale in the form of Sinfonietta by Alexander
Harutyunyan, a thrilling, technically difficult work of cinematic
scope.
As sure of themselves as 20-somethings all round the world, the
orchestra was well prepared with three quick, rip-roaring encores: a
traditional Altounyan Berd Dance, the Vienna March by Fritz Kreisler
and Fiddle Faddle, a jazz-inflected romp by Leroy Anderson, in which
the cellos break into song halfway through. Smbatyan conducted with
the louche rhythm of an old fashion swing bandmaster, the crowd went
wild and no one looked happier than the shiny young musicians taking
their bows. Life duly affirmed.
518/ART/705179986/1007