The San Diego Youth Symphony Orchestra is Superb

Just to make sure I don’t step on the lead, here it is: The San Diego Youth Symphony orchestra  is superb. Last night was the end of the 64^th season for this unrivaled youth symphonic orchestra.

This last performance of the season, dedicated to Chelsea King whose French Horn sat on an empty chair, was brilliantly performed. If there is a qualitative difference between that performance last night and anything I ever heard from the San Diego Symphony, it was not noticeable to my ears.

Perhaps the orchestra played over their heads, driven by the adrenaline and the empathy they felt for the attending King family – but more likely they are simply that good. If  you read the long list of colleges and universities being attended by the graduating high school seniors on the orchestra you will better understand.

Buoyed by a Guest Artist, Gustavo Romero, a San Diego native who was in town to celebrate the Chopin Bicentennial with the La Jolla Music Society, he was a natural for this concert and his performance was truly impressive.

I soured on the city symphony orchestras  decades ago as they went through their Avante Garde days, when professional musicians, I suppose tired of playing the same favorite music at each concert, pressured the music scene to play music “not heard for 300 years.”

There was a great reason that music had not been heard for 300 years! It was awful! There is a reason symphony goer’s love Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, or a Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto. They are beautiful. They are lyrical You can hum them. You can whistle them. They play in your head.

Young musicians are not so jaded that they have grown to hate that which audiences have grown to love. They play with enthusiasm, and imbued with both grief and remembrance of such a touchingly beautiful girl who was their fellow member, the philharmonic orchestra outdid themselves with as good a rendition of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture as you will EVER hear.

The youth orchestra had been augmented by graduate musicians of the orchestra for this tribute, and it was all Copley Hall could do to contain the music.

It was so good that they were smart enough to refuse the audience demands for an encore.

There was no way to encore THAT performance.