Preparatory School

“On a warm spring afternoon in Prague hours before he was set to play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the New England Conservatory Young Philharmonic Orchestra as part of their tour from Prague to Vienna, Li sat down to talk with The Prague Post.”

To read the entire interview, please click HERE.

On the dinner cruise in Prague. Listen here:

Visiting the beautiful, historic city of Bratislava was truly an incredible experience.  We started off our day by eating lunch, we took a walking tour of the cities most famous and beautiful sights.  A few of those included visiting the house where Mozart stayed as a child and seeing the magnificent church where the coronation of Maria Teresa was held.  We even walked the same path where many royal coronation processions took place.  In the evening we traveled a short distance to Vienna, one of the music capitals of the world, where we were invited to attend the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra’s concert in the magnificent concert hall, the Musikferien.  We were captivated with George Li’s performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 and were swept up in the passion of Mahler’s 9th Symphony.  Afterwards, we joined the YPO at a charming, romantic candlelit restaurant for a traditional dinner of Schnitzel and rich dark chocolate cake.  The laughter and smiles shared between friends was the perfect way to end a day that we will all treasure forever. – Ellen B. and Emma C.

A Moment
There is a moment when the music dies away, a silence unlike any other, that pause before the first tentative applause breaks the spell. As the conductor gradually lowers his arms time is suspended and then, slowly, presence becomes memory , immediate sensation gives way to reflection, and the mind, in ever widening pools of resonance, is cast back across the arc of a journey traveled together. A bond of concentrated immersion between performer and audience stands revealed. It is a precious thing, this taut, slender thread that has bound souls, minds and bodies into a single shared experience. And we learn much about who we are by where we have been. But in that one hushed moment in between we learn, too, what we might yet become.
There has been a series of such remarkable moments on this journey of discovery. In Prague and Litomysl, in the Great Hall of the Slovak Radio in Bratislav; in the grey, cramped House of Culture in Jihlava, in the majestic 14th-century Dominican church in Krems. Different venues, different audiences, here Dvorak, there Mahler, and everywhere that same mysterious moment in which the circumstances, venue, even the youth of this remarkable orchestra are forgotten before we are all engulfed in a single miraculous instant.
And it is miraculous, in fact a chain of miracles, from all that goes into a composition and its completion, to the way it finds its advocates and enthusiasts, and to how a conductor embraces, studies, and interprets its message….
Another vignette: a veteran from the trenches, a horn player in the Slovak Radio Orchestra, earnestly shaking Ben Zander’s hand with the words: “after forty years at last I heard this symphony played as Dvorak intended.” This old musician was full of enthusiasm for this bracing, compelling interpretation that revealed qualities of Dvorak’s New World Symphony that had, for him, remained hidden. This was praise indeed both for Maestro Zander and for the remarkably sensitive orchestra that realized his interpretation with such clarity and intensity.
The young players of the YPO are good and they know it; they’ve been told that by their parents, teachers, mentors, adoring audiences, and above all by their devoted conductor. They’ve got chops. Their pianissimos are breathtaking, their fortes inspire awe, their ensemble is beautifully balanced and each soloist a brilliant reflection upon the whole. They are so amazingly responsive to every gesture, cue, and glance. With this orchestra Ben Zander can do anything. But what they may not yet realize is the full import of that moment of silence when the playing stops.
Once the spell is broken we are almost relieved by the rush of emotion and moral uplift that is the anonymous safety of an ovation. Because in that one moment of silence we are all – audience and players alike – suddenly naked and profoundly alone. It is a moment of potential and, yes, possibility, and its content is ours alone to fill. To provoke such inward probing is one of the highest ambitions of art; to create such moments, an achievement of the first order.

Sightseeing in Prague. Listen here:

Hooray for a huge success in Prague. Listen here:

After the YSO dress rehearsal in Prague. Listen here:

Wien, Musikverein, großer Saal. I know this golden hall, probably better than any other concert space in the world. I heard my first concert here forty years ago and over the decades have seen countless rehearsals and performances by many soloists, orchestras, and conductors, including some of the greatest. And I know this audience. Sophisticated, experienced, snobby, and smug. Win them over and their enthusiasm knows no bounds; fail and their polite indifference has the sting of an arctic blast. This was the last hurdle of the YPO’s Mahler tour, its greatest challenge, the highpoint and culmination. For me it was a homecoming.
For this reason, perhaps, I approached this concert with surprising calm. I could appreciate the wide-eyed wonder these young people were experiencing – I, too, had once gawked at so much gilded splendor. I could also sense their physical pleasure in bathing in the warmth of this unparalleled acoustic space. But for once I felt closer to the Viennese audience welcoming strangers into “their hall”.
I had spread the word and invited Viennese friends – musicians and music lovers. Many came, some with reservations. After all there had been two recent performances of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony and now this “Kinderorchester”? It took some persuasion. Probably quite a lot of persuasion, because this Thursday was a holiday and the Viennese love their four-day week-ends. But in the end the hall was packed, and not with tourists and coerced students groups. This was a Viennese audience, the real deal. Now it was up to the YPO to prove itself.
With each performance, in Prague, Jihlava, and Krems, the Mahler had gone extremely well and Ben Zander glowed in the freedom with which he could shape his interpretation. One of his young musicians marveled that as the tour progressed he was no longer getting nervous before each performance of this sometimes treacherously transparent work. Each player, it seemed, was drawing so much support from the orchestra as a whole that contributing to that whole became the sole concern. Such esprit de corps is ringing testimony to this conductor’s leadership skills. Indeed, all the players I spoke with felt that they not only had absorbed their parts but those of the others, as well. Several told me that they were confident they could have performed the entire work from memory. A Mahler symphony by heart! Ah, the cockiness of youth! But I believe them – so much had this work penetrated into the very fiber of their beings.
The concert in the Musikverein began with Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, which the orchestra and soloist George Li had last performed in Litomysl. Li’s performance was surprisingly impetuous, he took risks and pushed at the edges of this work’s classically balanced structure. It was a daring and provocative reading – and the audience loved it and him. He was called back again and again and when the orchestra stood there was a roar approval. Half the battle.
During intermission there was much talk about the youth of the orchestra. ‘That concert mistress – how old do you think she is? Did you hear the woodwinds? And the sound of the strings!’ One friend, a professional flutist, exclaimed with conviction that this had to be the best youth orchestra in America. Another friend nodded, but grumbled, ‘all well and good, but Mahler? We’ll see.’
The Ninth Symphony is a work that requires nearly an hour and a half of intense concentration with little, if any, opportunity for emotional repose. The outer movements are slow with long, sustained arching lines. There are explosive climaxes in the first; an extremely hushed and drawn-out farewell in the last. The middle movements are quirky and quixotic, a series of sharply etched character studies with frequent shifts in tempo and often dense contrapuntal textures. There are challenges everywhere for the brass and woodwinds, for intonation and intra-sectional ensemble.
Beyond all this there was concern for Ben Zander’s knee, which had given out after the concert in Jihlava. In Krems he used crutches and a stool, standing only in the last movement. In Vienna, however, the crutches and stool were gone, as if to say that nothing was going to interfere with this performance. And nothing did. It was a performance that, from beginning to end, was focused solely on this extraordinary score in this extraordinary hall where Mahler himself had frequently performed and where Bruno Walter had given the premiere of this symphony on June 26, 1912, almost 99 years earlier to the day.
The audience listened with the kind of rapt attention that suggested the novelty of a stage full of teenagers had been pushed into the background. This performance was going to be judged entirely on its own merits and these young musicians held to highest standards. Ben Zander took risks, as well. Those climaxes in the first movement had a grandeur unlike anything we’d heard before; in the middle movements he asked for and received unprecedented clarity and brilliance; and in the last movement, this intensely inward-looking Adagio, he achieved an expansive calm that must have surprised even the players themselves.
And then that exquisite moment of silence. Too much to bear. It was broken, somewhat prematurely, by a single booming “Bravo!” That unleashed a torrent of applause and stamping feet (ah, the wooden floors of the Musikverein!), followed by the sound of clattering seats as the audience rose as one for a standing ovation. It was loud, heartfelt, and sustained, punctuated but not driven by shouts and whistles coming from NEC schoolmates from the touring Youth Symphony, who had come over from Bratislava to hear the concert. What a proud day for this conservatory to be represented by such ambassadors! And what a triumph for Ben Zander, who has molded these gifted young players into an ensemble of astonishing power and depth. This was a performance fully worthy of the hallowed traditions of the Musikverein and these young artists had earned their place among the generations of musicians that had preceded them. They, too, were now at home.
Christopher Hailey

They made it to Prague!  Listen here:

The YSO leaves Bratislava. Listen here:

On the bus back after a great day in Vienna. Listen here:

The YSO walking tour in Vienna: listen here:

Listen here:

They’re still at the border in a no man’s land between Hungary and the Slovak Republic. With lots of hellos.

Listen here:

A new audio broadcast from the YSO as they travel to Bratislava. Click to listen here:

Listen to the YSO’s latest phonecast they called in right after their first concert (sold out!)

Dear YPO Families:

We traveled from Bratislava to Vienna today. The two cities are not very far apart, but were on opposite sides of the iron curtain, and 20 years later, the differences are still apparent. We had a brush with the Slovak bureaucracy at the border – while both countries are members of the Schengen Zone, so there is no passport control at the border, the bus drivers had to return some electronic devices that tracked miles driven. After waiting for 20 minutes or so, it became clear that it was going to take quite awhile longer, so we sent two of the buses on ahead, leaving the third bus driver to return all three devices. While we were waiting, Chris Hailey gathered an impromptu group for a history lesson. The Mahler and Ravel buses stopped briefly at the hotel, as we needed to drop off Dr. Kwa to help Mr. Zander, whose knee has been quite painful the past couple of days.

All three buses reconnected at the Grinzing Cemetary, where we visited Mahler’s grave and left some roses gathered yesterday from the rose garden at his birthplace. Then we walked down the hill to a heuriger, where we had a delicious lunch. After lunch, we reboarded the buses and began a city tour, mostly by bus, but leaving the buses to look at the Hunderdtwasser House and the outside of Schonbrunn Palace. We finally checked into our hotel around 5:30, and quickly departed for dinner, followed by a meeting with Mr. Zander.

Tomorrow morning we’ll spend some time exploring the historic center of Vienna on foot before heading to Krems an der Donau for a rehearsal and concert.

Best wishes,

Elisabeth Christensen

Mahler often said, “my time will come,” but at the time of his death in 1911 that time seemed a very long way off. It was only after the Second World War that a halting revival began. When I was a student the centenary of his birth in 1960 was barely noted. Mahler was still a “discovery”; performances were few and we awaited each installment of the first complete recorded cycles with eager anticipation. Today, on the centennial of his death, his music is everywhere, so much so that I’ve wondered whether there is danger that these tortured, enigmatic and sublime symphonies might now be taken for granted.
And then I heard a performance of Mahler’s 9th Symphony by New England Conservatory Youth Philharmonic Orchestra. Could Mahler himself have imagined such an engaged, disciplined, and polished performance? Certainly not from the professional orchestras of his day; they struggled with this music. But these kids – I hesitate to call them that because there is a maturity and commitment here that can put many seasoned professionals to shame –  these young musicians dig deep into this music, search for meaning and expression with a passion that is the hallmark of the young. In their hands this music sounds fresh, bold, audacious and supremely genuine.
The special treat for me, though, is to peek behind the scenes. My role as a kind of resident music historian, a walking resource, affords me the opportunity to observe and interact, to hear rehearsals, ride along on the tour bus, give impromptu “lectures”, chat with a cellist or a horn player, answer questions and ask quite a few of my own. And it is in getting to know these kids (yeah, they’re kids with all the impetuous enthusiasm and curiosity of that glorious breed), in watching their own interaction with their inspired and inspiring conductor, Ben Zander, I’ve come to learn something of the source of their extraordinary music making.
This trip feels nothing like a “tour” – if it’s Sunday this must be Bratislava” – but rather a journey of discovery. It is first of all a Mahler pilgrimage. The itinerary includes cities in which the composer himself performed, lived, or worked. We’ll visit his birthplace, as well as his grave, pass through countryside he knew and loved, perform in halls in which he once performed, including the historic Musikverein in Vienna. But beyond that this is a discovery of the way in which his music, indeed all the music on these YPO concerts, is part of a dense weave of history, language, landscape, and peoples. Every castle, cathedral, baroque palace, medieval arch, elegant art nouveau façade, and twisted cobblestone alley, produces gasps of wonder and delight; snippets of history begin to connect, larger patterns slowly emerge. I’m asked about the meaning of nationalism in Litomysl, the birthplace Smetana, the Czech national composer; another student has discovered the ancient Jewish cemetery in Prague; here’s a delightful Czech storybook or a pastry in the shape of violin. But running through it all is the sense that all these traces of the past and serendipitous encounters are a part of a vibrant, living culture, to which these concerts are themselves a vital contribution.
It began in Prague in the magnificent Dvorak Hall of the Rudolfinum, home of the Czech Philharmonic. One could feel the enthusiastic response to George Li’s brilliant performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto and the wave of audience approval as the glorious sound of the strings in the last movement of Mahler’s symphony brought this gorgeously resonant hall to life. And that resonance lingered on in this wonderful vignette after the concert: on the bus back to the hotel two violinists huddled together, pouring over their parts to find favorite passages and then this sad realization – we won’t be playing the Mahler again for another four days – an eternity!
If the Prague concert was a triumph nothing could have prepared the YPO for the audience in Litomysl, an idyllic town in the heart of the Czech countryside. The concert space in the courtyard of the town’s historic castle (a world heritage site) consisted of sharply rising rows of seats that gave the orchestra and audience an unusual sense of intimacy. And that’s what we all felt right from the beginning of the concert. The performance of Ravel’s La Valse established from outset the YPO’s credentials – fully justifying its place on the program of this internationally famous Smetana Festival in which the Czech Philharmonic is a regular guest.
After the first movement of the Beethoven concerto the audience erupted into spontaneous applause, and at the end, a standing ovation with the sound of stomping feet – the ultimate accolade for the audiences of Central and Eastern Europe. The concert concluded with a thrilling performance of Dvorák’s New World Symphony, through which the YPO paid eloquent tribute to the music of their Czech hosts. By that time there was an unbreakable bond between these performers and their audience, a bond that was sealed by Ben Zander’s warm words from the stage and a heartfelt encore, “Nimrod” from Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Such a concert and such a response are rare events and the members of the YPO knew it – you could see it in their faces and in their exuberant high spirits that continued into the early morning hours on our long trip back to Prague.

Greetings Youth Symphony Family and Friends,

We have arrived in Budapest, Hungary.  Our trip here went well, but we are all exhausted.  The first day of the tour has been full of activity. The orchestra had their first rehearsal for their concert tomorrow night at Nador Hall.  They sound wonderful and we can’t wait for the concert.  We then went our for an amazing dinner on the Kossuth Museum Ship which is on the Danube River.  The food was a three-course meal that consisted of Budapest traditional cuisine.  It was very tasty.  After our dinner we attended a wonderful concert which featured the World Premiere of Karl Jenkins’s “The Bard of Wales Cantata,” at the Hungarian National Concert Hall.  This was a real treat for all of us on tour to experience this special moment for Hungarian Arts.

Tomorrow will be another full day of activity.  We will be taken on a guided tour around Budapest and the Castle Hill area.  There is a lot to see in this city in a short amount of time.  We will update you more as the orchestra completes their first performance of the tour tomorrow.

You can listen to our latest phonecast here:

Thinking of you,
Corey

Kossuth Museum ship

NEC Youth Symphony – European Tour June 2011 – 2nd phonecast.

Another audio update from the YSO! Click the link to play it now.

Budapest