If the National Youth Orchestra looked thinner on the ground than usual for its Birmingham Town Hall concert, it was for a good reason. For its Easter tour it has been split in half. Mind you, that’s still 80-plus players in each band. You won’t feel deprived of decibels.
The team I saw are playing in Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Sheffield. The others are performing exactly the same repertoire in London, Wigan and Manchester. Dividing this great national cultural asset makes sense. It allows these fine young musicians to reach out and inspire more people, young and old, through workshops and pop-up performances in each region.
Mind you, it must take some logistical brilliance behind the scenes to organise transport, accommodation and rehearsals for two simultaneous tours of 160 teenagers. Perhaps these well-organised NYO managers should offer to run Birmingham city council and get the rubbish collected while they are in the city.
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The highlight here, sonically, visually and virtuosically, was the 2005 Percussion Concerto by the American composer Jennifer Higdon. It’s not the most profound music emotionally, with harmony and melody often completely subordinated to rhythm. But it provides a terrific workout on an entire kitchen of percussion gear, laid out across the front of the stage, for an exuberant soloist. And Jordan Ashman, who won the BBC Young Musician competition playing this work in 2022, is definitely that.
What made the piece particularly suitable for this concert, however, was the way that the six orchestral percussionists get drawn into dialogues — thunderous, delicate or even mystical — with the soloist. It’s a real first-among-equals showpiece. Towards the end of the work there’s a stupendous massed-drums cadenza that must have set the wild echoes flying across the Midlands, after which (to cover a lot of stage rearrangement) Ashman led the audience in a fun-filled clap-along. At 20 he already knows how to work a crowd.
Before that, the NYO, conducted by Paolo Bortolameolli, delivered a well-prepared performance of Stravinsky’s Petrushka ballet that took a little too long to ignite and never quite had enough character in the wind solos. Perhaps dividing the orchestra has pushed younger players into exposed roles. Doubtless confidence will grow as they hit the road.
★★★★☆
Roundhouse, London, Apr 15, then touring, nyo.org.uk
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