European Union Youth Orchestra
Usher Hall, Edinburgh - 16/08/24
European Union Youth Orchestra, conductor – Gianandrea Noseda
The accent on youth at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival was bolstered by two lively and proficient hour-long ‘beanbag’ concerts at the Usher Hall, running at 6pm and 8pm respectively, and featuring some of the finest upcoming orchestral musicians from across the continent.
Part of a Summer 2024 tour stretching from Grafenegg to New York City, Lucerne, Bolzano, Berlin and Scotland’s capital, the European Union Youth Orchestra’s mission is both to strengthen the growing EUYO brand and to reach out to fresh audiences – not least young people less familiar with classical music and the orchestral scene.
The atmosphere was established for the early evening concert by a plethora of brightly coloured beanbags replacing regular seating in the stalls area and a good audience age mix. The chosen opener was the third movement (Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen) from Mahler’s Symphony No.1, which has actually been performed more extensively than any of his later symphonic works. It features a range of musical transitions which highlight the variety, colour and texture of the orchestra.
Gianandrea Noseda took the music at a crisp pace. It soon became evident that the young musicians in his charge are exceptional talents. As the conductor pointed out in his talk afterwards, introduced winsomely by EIF director Nicola Benedetti (“I play violin, like these people”, pointing to the string section), this section of the symphony features a double bass solo variation on the theme of ‘Frère Jacques’ – for Mahler, ‘Bruder Martin’. This is moved from D major to D minor and ingeniously reworked.
Noseda then went through the different sections of the orchestra by way of introducing the main course. Benjamin Britten’s ‘The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra’ is a glittering tour-de-force, with moments of exquisite detail, if not introspection. The EUYO gave a bright, rhythmically sharp and extremely accomplished account of this rightly popular masterwork.
The third work in the programme was ‘Nimrod’, from Elgar’s famous ‘Enigma Variations’. This was beautifully delivered but somehow struggled to achieve the monumental impact that it can as part of the whole suite. This is part of the problem with what is sometimes rudely dubbed the “bleeding chunks” approach to popular programming.
For their encore, the EUYO (which features 100 players from 27 countries, but sadly none from the UK following Brexit) chose Spanish composer Jaime Texidor’s exuberant ‘Amparito roca’ to serve as a heart-warming finale, with the members of the orchestra moving skilfully around the packed stage as they played, and then ending up hugging each other in a planned but sincere gesture.
The boisterous nature of that first concert was not quite matched by the 8pm one, though Grammy-nominated African-American composer Carlos Simon’s ‘Fate Now Conquers’ proved an energetic post-minimalist style opener, with Gianandrea Noseda (who has worked closely with the composer) swaying it along.
While cellist Nicolas Altstaedt gave an emphatic performance, by turns gutsy and lyrical, as part of EUYO’s 1897 adaptation of Richard Strauss’s enjoyable Op. 35 tone poem ‘Don Quixote’, the work’s details were slightly muted by the changed acoustic. But it was still a well-considered take, with viola, tenor tuba and bass clarinet delivering especially well.
‘Nimrod’ and ‘Amparito roca’ were the encores once again, which might have slightly disappointed some of those who attended both concerts. But overall the European Union Youth Orchestra made a huge EIF impression, with their conductor being both entertainingly balletic and impressively effective in helping their expanding talent to shine so vividly.
Photo credit: Andrew Perry
