Over 200 miles away from Liverpudlians cheering their team’s dramatic extra-time winning goal in the Carabao Cup at Wembley, there was a different, but no less extraordinary celebration. A reunion of past and present Youth Orchestras brought together the current Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and past members of Merseyside Youth Orchestra. Among them was a certain percussionist former member who went on to become Sir Simon Rattle.
Rescheduled due to Covid from the actual 70th anniversary of the MYO in 2021, the concert was a miraculous coming together of no less than 195 past players (many of whom became amateur musicians while some went on to professional careers) as well as former members on backstage duty or in the audience. The MYO Appreciation Society Facebook page is testament to the camaraderie of this band of brothers and sisters. With the help of an informative script presented by Stephen MacKay, himself a former MYO bassoonist, the programme not only paid homage to the orchestra’s tradition but also allowed everyone to take part who wanted to (including all 17 flautists).
Rattle himself conducted the current Youth Orchestra (plus a couple of discretely placed senior fillers) in the overture to Mozart’s The Magic Flute: the first work performed at the MYO’s inaugural concert in 1951 under its founder William Jenkins. Rattle took a tempo that was not too challenging for the young players, allowing for a spirited, characterful account.
Then it was the turn of the former MYO members to take over, including Rattle himself as second sleigh bell shaker, led by the indefatigable octogenarian Timothy Reynish, their principal conductor from 1975-83. They romped through Elgar’s Cockaigne with elegance, dignity and a nice degree of rumbustiousness.
A few of the current youth orchestra members then returned for the party piece of the concert, in the shape of the West Side Story Symphonic Dances, under Clark Rundell, truly in his element. Drive and energy were balanced by lyricism and sweet sorrow, and Sir Simon exercised a few more of his percussionist muscles in the Mambo.
The second half was given over to weightier matters. Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony was the first work in which the teenage maestro-to-be took the baton to conduct the MYO. The wisdom of years has done nothing to dim his youthful enthusiasm. Needing no further invitation, each member of the orchestra played as if their life depended on it. The psychological profundity of the symphony, and its post-Stalin context, demand nothing less. Rattle’s vision of the dramatic architecture was unerring, and his sheer know-how and efficiency helped the orchestra to rise way beyond the notes and to reach for the stars.
Sustaining the first movement’s long lyrical lines, Rattle took us from post-apocalyptic meditation through relived tragedy to a final even more scarred desolation. The second movement was terrifyingly dangerous as the orchestra went for broke with a nothing-to-lose attitude. There were some achingly beautiful woodwind solos throughout. No less riveting was the declamation of nine unison horns in the third movement: as personal a moment for Shostakovich as the defiant assertions of his signature theme. The double-sized woodwind section gave their interjections lacerating force, and the ambivalence of the triumphant final pages packed a terrific punch. All this made for an intensely memorable occasion, not just for the massed participants but also for the packed audience.
