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University Centre Auditorium
April 13, 2025
While scrolling through one of the social media sites recently, I came across a quip by a booster of so-called "artificial intelligence" where the author bemoaned the fact that developing a proficiency on any musical instrument takes time, effort, dedication, and some inate talent. In short, our correspondent wrote, it's hard, and in some mythical future, AI would somehow eliminate the challenges.
My mind immediately went to a scene in the baseball film A League of Their Own (1992), where the captain of the team, portrayed by Geena Davis, is telling the manager (played by Tom Hanks) that she is quitting the team. He asks her why, and she says "It just got too hard". The manager replies by saying "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great".
A musician, like an athlete, also requires the opportunity to practice, but more importantly, the opportunity to play. Even more so, it's vital that a developing musician gets the opportunity to perform in a concert setting as part of an ensemble with other musicians. The Greater Victoria Youth Orchestra provides that opportunity for some very talented musicians to continue their musical development.
The GVYO is clearly an intermediate step for the members of the orchestra. From the programme notes and the awards that were presented prior to the second half, it's clear that some of the members of the orchestra are pursuing careers as musicians, with further study in their future. But there are also those who are pivotting to performance-adjacent lives (such as musicology), and those that are striving to careers in other fields (engineering and medicine).
None of this diminished the quality of the performances we heard at the final concert of the 2024-25 season. The GVYO's Musical Director, Yariv Aloni, along with the Sectional Coaches named in the programme, provide outstanding leadership to the ensemble.
The concert opened with the tone poem Tara's Dream by Stephen Chatman (b.1950). The piece is a dazzling pastiche, from the hushed opening of strings and tuned percussion that hints at the pastoralism of Vaughan Williams and Copland, before shifting to a thumping, brass-heavy Stravinsky-esque section. This is followed by sections that sound in turn like a Mozart piano concerto, Charles Ives's take on ragtime, and more of that pastoral mood to close. The performance by the GVYO was thoroughly engaging, and a fascinating way to start the concert...why not demonstrate the ensemble's ability to tackle a weath of musical styles in the first ten minutes?
For the next four pieces on the programme, members of the orchestra stepped forward into the spotlight for concerto performances. The first was Matty Angus, soloist in the Allegro movement from Weber's Clarinet Concerto No.1 in F minor, Op.73. This classical-era concerto is a charming example of the period, and gives the soloist ample challenge. Angus was up to the task, particularly in the contrast of the warm tone for the sweet main melodies and the dazzling runs of the cadenza.
The second concerto was Chaminade's Concertino Op.107, with the flute solo part played by Daniel Sanabria Torres. Again, the solo part requires dexterity on the instrument, and Torres gave an adept and charming performance.
Next was the Czardas by Monti, in an arrangement for marimba (with a side of glockenspiel, if my percussion-identification skills are trustworthy) performed by Kayler Kim. This was a crowd-pleaser, with the various changes in tempo requiring dexterity on the mallets (including switching mallets mid-stream). Noteworthy was Kim's tremolo technique in the slower sections, which produced an even, sustained tone.
The final concerto soloist on the programme was Amaya Sydor, performing Lebedev's Concerto No.1 for Bass Trombone, which manages to pack a wide range of content into a relatively short work. Sydor produced a fantastic tone, rich and warm whether on the upper register or pedal tones across the varying moods of the piece.
Throughout the concertos, the rest of the orchestra produced sympathetic and measured support.
The final piece on the programme and the GVYO's season was Liszt's tone poem, Les Préludes. Albeit in a very different genre, it is similar to Tara's Dream that opened the concert in that the symphonic poem moves between quiet passages with single voices (such as flute and horn), through to dramatic episodes. Again the GVYO handled the shifts in mood with aplomb, from the hushed tones of the string sections through to the concluding triumphant episode, led by the brass and percussion sections.
The Greater Victoria Youth Orchestra provides a tremendous opportunity for young people in Victoria to develop as musicians and performers. This concert, led by Yariv Aloni, again demonstrates the ensemble's status as one of the top contributors to symphonic music in Victoria.
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