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Young Players Raise Horns to the Hunt
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Ryan McAdams conducting the New York Youth Symphony in Mahler’s Fifth Symphony at Carnegie Hall on Sunday. The
concert w as Mr. McAdams’s finale as the group’s music director.
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Published: May 28, 2012
The programs that the impressive New Y ork Y outh Symphony
presents at Carnegie Hall are typically ambitious and substantive. So
it was on Sunday afternoon, when the orchestra played its final
concert of the season, the last to be conducted by Ryan McAdams,
who has ended his five-year tenure as music director. The main work
was Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor, a complex, craggy
and demanding score lasting some 75 minutes. And Mr. McAdams
drew an energetic and involving performance from the inspired
players, who range in age from 12 to 22.
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REPRINTS
Every program this ensemble gives at
Carnegie Hall includes the premiere of
a work written by a young composer.
This one had “On the Hunt,” a restless, fitful 15-minute
piece for horn quartet and orchestra by Elizabeth A. Kelly.
But after Ms. Kelly’s piece, before intermission, these young
players revealed a sentimental side, when they played an
unscheduled piece in tribute to Mr. McAdams: an
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arrangement for violin and orchestra of the aria “O mio
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babbino caro” from Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi,” with the
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concertmaster Samuel Katz as soloist, and Sarah Kidd, the
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assistant conductor, taking over the podium. The aria has
one of those Puccini tunes that grab you. Mr. Katz played it
with lovely sound and lyricism. Mr. McAdams, standing in front of the players as he
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listened, seemed overcome.
In introducing the tribute performance, Leslie J. Garfield, the chairman of the orchestra’s
board, said that the New Y ork Y outh Symphony had an admirable history of choosing
rising young music directors who go on to have notable careers. This was no idle boast.
Y ou need only look down the list of 15 conductors to date: names like Leonard Slatkin,
Myung-Whun Chung and Miguel Harth-Bedoya. Paul Haas, Mr. McAdams’s immediate
predecessor, who is also a composer, has appeared with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the
National Symphony, the New World Symphony and others.
Mr. McAdams’s career started taking off while he was with the New Y ork Y outh
Symphony. He has conducted regularly with the New Y ork City Ballet and has appeared
with the Israel Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the St. Paul Chamber
Orchestra and Maggio Musicale in Florence. He proved himself again on Sunday, starting
with the new piece by Ms. Kelly, who is completing a Ph.D. in composition at the Eastman
School of Music.
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In “On the Hunt” she evokes, transforms and distorts the musical associations of horn
calls with hunting and the Romantic hero. The solo parts were played by a horn quartet of
four women with the irreverent name Genghis Barbie. The ensemble has won fans
through its arrangements of pop, rock, jazz, indie and classical contemporary music. It
dispatched the demands of Ms. Kelly’s piece with aplomb and vitality.
The work begins with quizzical solo horn calls that soon overlap into disjointed phrases.
Gradually the orchestra surrounds the quartet with ambiguous string harmonies, anxious
blasts and warbling woodwinds, culminating in a frenetic chase to the growling
conclusion of this deconstructed hunting music.
After intermission these intrepid players took on Mahler’s Fifth. Without a strongly
shaped, clearly executed performance, this symphony can easily seem baffling. The New
Y ork Y outh Symphony’s sound may not have had the polish of a professional orchestra,
but Mr. McAdams drew vivid, colorful and often incisive playing from the young
musicians. The scherzo is driven by a solo horn part, and in this performance the excellent
principal horn player, Nathanael Udell, stood in front of the orchestra like a concerto
soloist, which allowed the role of the horn to come through the whole with enhanced
drama. The finale balanced episodes of hurtling power with passages of delicacy and
grace.
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The ovation went on and on as Mr. McAdams singled out players for bows and accepted
many hugs. His successor, Joshua Gersen, will make his Carnegie Hall debut in
November, when he conducts the orchestra in its 50th-anniversary concert.
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A version of this review appeared in print on May 29, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition w ith the headline: Young
Players Raise Horns To the Hunt.
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