One unanticipated high spot of the Canberra musical year has turned out to be the appearance of The LGT Young Soloists at the Snow Concert Hall on Saturday evening, 25 November.
The name “young soloists” is apt, for though the group appears and plays as a string orchestra, it is an ensemble of young virtuosi, aged from 14 to 23, with members drawn from 20 nations. It was founded in 2013 by Alexander Gilman, now a professor of violin at London’s Royal College of Music, who led Saturday night’s performances. The program – opening and closing with substantial works but with shorter pieces between – was arranged to give as many instrumentalists as possible the chance to showcase their talents. Those world-class talents were on abundant display.
It was obvious from the energy and precision with which the players sprang into the Jig that opens Holst’s St Paul’s Suite that we could expect a night of exceptional music-making. So it proved to be.
Virtuosity implies displays of agility, vigour and clarity, and there was much of that, from Ji Eun Park playing a viola adaptation of La Campanella from Paganini’s Concerto No 2, and from Clarissa Bevilacqua (violin) and Alexander Heather (double bass) in Giovanni Bottesini’s Gran Duo Concertante for violin, double bass and strings. With its echoes of Rossini, the Bottesini is a charming, often playful piece for an unusual pairing of instruments. It also gives the bass player an opportunity to show the instrument’s unexpected capacity for delicacy and lyricism: the instrument really sang.
But virtuosity should also embrace emotional depth as well as ostentation, and here violist Agnes Oberndorfer, in Myroslav Skoryk’s Melody, and cellist Tara Stranegger, in Paganini’s Variations on the ‘Moses’ Theme by Rossini, gave warm and reflective performances. Oberndorfer dedicated her performance to victims of the Ukrainian war — appropriate for a plaintive, elegiac work by the Ukrainian composer — while Stranegger showed how tuneful using only a single string can be.
But perhaps the most notable solo performance in the first part of the evening was that of cellist Lyam Chenaux, the youngest member of the ensemble, who gave us a mature and deeply felt performance of Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei. It was an astounding achievement for a young player.
The single work concluding the concert was Beethoven’s Sonata No.9, the ‘Kreutzer’, in Paul Struck’s arrangement for violin and string orchestra. Haeun Honney Kim took up the 1731 ‘Kreutzer’ Stradivarius and proved more than equal to the work’s technical challenges and shifting moods, from the unsettling first movement, through the variations that comprise the reflective slow movement, to the exuberant Presto finale. I was less convinced by the arrangement for string orchestra: it works in its way, but I missed the tonal contrast and depth that a piano brings.
The concert was pleasantly informal, with in most instances each solo performer introducing the work they were about to play and explaining their attachment to it. The audience responded, and the evening ended with a standing ovation for the first concert of the ensemble’s Australian tour. They seemed to relish the two encores, Vittorio Monti’s Czardas and an arrangement of Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Gilman praised the concert hall, as well he might. The performing space is open and uncluttered, the sightlines are clear, the acoustic is excellent — even the seats are comfortable (no small plus). Perhaps the organisers might add to their audience advice a request that people not applaud between movements, but wait until a work is finished.
Incidentally, it was pleasing to see (and hear) the Stradivarius, one of four that are tagged “Kreutzer”. This particular instrument once belonged to the French virtuoso Rodolphe Kreutzer, to whom Beethoven dedicated the sonata. In more recent times, it belonged to the reclusive American millionairess and philanthropist Huguette M. Clark. After her death in 2011, the instrument was found in a cupboard in one of her several vacant homes, where it had lain for two decades. It was passed in when auctioned by Christie’s in New York in 2014. It is difficult to discover who now owns the Strad: perhaps it is LGT Private Banking, the group founded in Liechtenstein in 1921 and owned by the princely House of Liechtenstein, whose foundation supports the Young Soloists.
Altogether, a triumphant end to the Snow Concert Hall’s inaugural year.
— Peter Fuller
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