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Youth Orchestra of the America's concert in São Paolo
August 8th, 2002
8/12/2002 10:54 AMI am on the plane back from São Paolo, bringing to an end my brief, but incredibly rewarding stint with the Youth Orchestra of the Americas. I'll probably write about the earlier stages of the tour another time, but right now I want to tell about the final concert yesterday, which was one of the most intense experiences of my life. It began at 9p.m.with a performance of the National Anthem conducted, as at each of the concerts, by a member of the orchestra from the country we were visiting, in this case a tall, slim, drop-dead-handsome, black Brazilian violist called Wallace Pena. The anthem is probably the longest, and incidentally, most beautiful National Anthem. It could have been composed by Rossini! In fact it was written in the 1890's at the time of the formation of the country and is full of uplifting thoughts about nationhood, social responsibility and unity. A prominent Brazilian business man told me after the concert that tears were in his eyes as he stood singing the radiantly optimistic words of the national song, performed by an orchestra made up of layers from all the nations of the Americas and conducted by a young black man. He told me it was not the only time he was moved to tears that night.
After the anthem I came out and introduced the piece by Jon Deak, using one of the Brazilians in the orchestra as an interpreter. Deak had the difficult task of writing a short (six minute) concert opener - an Anthem for the Americas - that would be an appropriate celebration of the founding of an orchestra of 20 nations. He solved it very ingeniously by inviting 17 young composers, each from a different country of the Americas, to provide a theme. Then he amalgamated them, not by loosely stringing them together medley-style, but by having them jostle and fight each other, in the way that nations themselves might sometimes do.
The first part of the piece is quite hard to listen to and the music sometimes gets raw and confused, as if there is some real resistance to getting this thing going. There's plenty of nice samba and tango bits, but the anger is never far away. At one point the drums let loose in a frenzied improvisation, as if things have gone completely demented. Deak told me that September 11th was in the back of his mind, so he thought that may explain why the piece is so dark in places. It quiets down for a beautiful intimate section, in which a solo cello plays a theme written by a Mexican girl, called Christine Figeroa, who is only 12 years old! Other solo strings join and it becomes very soulful and touching. Then after playing snatches of the various themes, with lilting Latin dance rhythms, the trumpet takes up Christine's theme again and is joined by the whole orchestra in a joyous, triumphant end. I described all this, then I said I thought it was fitting that the journey from confusion to joy and triumph was led by a 12-year-old-child and an orchestra of young people.
The orchestra plays the piece fabulously by now and it was dispatched with terrific panache as if they really loved playing it, which I think they do. I think they also sense that I love conducting it. The audience gave it a very whole-hearted reaction, as if they sensed this was much more than just a formulaic opening number.
Then came Beethoven's Fourth piano concerto. The soloist is a gentle, sweet, 17- year-old Argentinian kid with great sensitivity and fabulous fingers, but who hasn't really got the measure of the Beethoven yet. However, things took a surprising turn in this performance. In the middle of the slow movement, a lady in the audience had a heart attack and had to be taken out. I was only dimly aware of what was going on, but there were some disturbed signs amongst the orchestra players, so I knew something upsetting was going on.
The slow movement, as you may remember, is a juxtaposition of a ferocious, fist-clenching declamation from the orchestra, followed by the most transcendent, gentle prayer on the piano. The orchestra keeps insisting furiously, the piano keeps quietly praying and cajoling. Eventually, the wild beast of the orchestra is tamed and the movement ends in ineffable peace. As a musical backdrop to the life and death struggle going on in the auditorium, it could not have been more apt. In fact, the lady lost the struggle, though we didn't know that at the time. She was lying in the foyer waiting for the ambulance for an inordinately long time. So long, that, after Horacio had played an encore, he was told he had to play another one. When that was over, he was instructed to play a third encore, because the woman was still in the foyer and they didn't want the audience to go out and find her there!
When we came back after the intermission, I felt that I wanted to say something to the audience about what had happened - I knew it must have been a very disturbing experience for everyone. It was by now after 10.30 p.m. and we were about to start an hour-long Mahler symphony. But still, I didn't feel we could ignore it.
First of all I had to hand out a citation to the CEO of Deutsche Bank in recognition of their support for the tour. That out of the way, I reported that the woman had been taken to hospital, though I didn't say that she had died.
Earlier that afternoon, by chance, I had read a rather remarkable prayer inspired by September 11th, written by a young woman whose father is a YOA Board member. The daughter was killed in a plane crash a couple of months ago and her devastated father had given me a copy the day before. I was so touched by what she wrote that I decided on the spot to read out one of the lines of the prayer, before the Mahler:: "I pray that each one of us learns to transform the force of fear into a force of love and faith." The young violinist who was translating suddenly became choked up as she translated those words. I said that I felt that it was an appropriate thought for this moment and was actually the theme of the Mahler symphony.
I spoke a bit about Mahler's own familiarity with death, having suffered the loss of so many siblings during his childhood. I said that the third movement of the symphony was a funeral march and its middle section, in G major, was like an escape from the struggles and terror of life. I pointed out that the little chirping cuckoo theme at the beginning of the symphony, (the falling interval of a 4th), depicting the solitude of nature, is transformed in the end into the triumphant march of universal love and faith, to which the young woman referred in her prayer.
It was a risky thing to do, however I think it was alright. One of the Executives from Deutsche Bank told me afterwards that he felt it had completely dispersed the tension in the hall and prepared everyone to hear the Mahler. I am glad I took the risk. In a sense it helped to bring the whole concert together as a single expression of triumph over limits and fear.
The Mahler performance was really extraordinary. It had grown in confidence and ease during the tour, but this last one reached a new level. The playing by now is so secure, eloquent and intense, and the timings are so natural that I felt I could do virtually anything and trust they would be with me. The elasticity in the second movement Laendler was like the ultimate in chamber music playing: 120 musicians playing with total freedom, perfectly together. The G major section - a little like the quiet voice of the piano in the slow movement of the Beethoven concerto in its repose and withdrawal, had an amazing intimacy and delicacy. I don't think I have heard it more beautifully played. And the stormy passages in the last movement and the apotheosis of the end were incredibly thrilling. .
I am sure that the fact that we all knew that it was our last performance together played a part in making it so special. I looked around the orchestra during the performance and caught the eyes of the players that I have come to know so well, and I could tell they were putting their last ounce of energy into it. That is one of the things about playing with a youth orchestra - you know, deep down, it will never be quite like this again. It's so different with a professional orchestra which comes back to these pieces over and over again.
The experience of working together for several weeks, struggling to overcome the difficulties of themusic, and building a community dedicated to one great and rewarding task and then dispersing, is very powerful. I am sure that the last performance of the Mahler with Chris Wilkins in Caracas will blow everybody's mind. And then, of course, there will be the added emotion that they will all be taking leave of each other - many of them to go back to lives of incredible poverty and deprivation. Possibly sensing some of this,
or maybe just responding to the performance, the audience went completely wild.
Then I called up Gustavo Dudanel, the brilliant 21-year-old Venezuelan conductor, who is one of the conductors on the tour, to conduct an encore, "The Little Train" by the Brazilian composer Villa Lobos. "I want to introduce to you a star of the future", I said, and then stood at the back and watched this Bjorn Borg of the baton, go through his paces. Again wild applause!
It was now past mid-night, and the audience was still clamoring for more. There was to be one last twist to the evening. In Rio, there had been a group of about thirty young Brazilian drummers playing outside the theater when we arrived. I had spontaneously invited them in to join us in the concert for the encore, Batuque by Fernandez. It had been such a success, I had decided we must do the same thing in São Paolo. Thanks to Simone Lavatelli, the head of the Mozarteum Concert Agency, a group of drummers had been found at one of the favellas in São Paolo. A number of our students had gone there for lunch and they had played for each other.
Now 16 of them, dressed in tee shirts, appeared on stage of the Teatro Alpha. We began the Batuque, soft and ominous, then gradually from the wings they started to appear, quietly drumming the hypnotic rhythms of the Batuque. They gradually came down through the orchestra, from either side of the stage, between the violins and cellos, closer and closer. As the piece build to its final, frenetic conclusion, they were right down in front of the podium, pounding the living daylights out of their drums while the orchestra built to the highest decibel moment of the whole evening.
The audience went crazy. More bows, A bouquet of flowers for me, which I handed to the beautiful young woman who had been drumming right in front of the podium and was now staring out at the wildly cheering crowd. She looked momentarily stunned as I handed her the enormous bouquet and then beamed.
To think that this young woman from one of the poorest parts of São Paolo, who had probably never been inside a concert hall, and had surely never seen a symphony orchestra, was receiving a bouquet of flowers from the conductor after her appearance with the orchestra at the concert! The Brazilian business man told me afterwards that the tears flowing down his cheeks at that moment were of an overwhelming sense of hope.
All that remained were the good byes with each member of the orchestra back at the hotel. What moved me so much was that almost every one of them thanked me for what they had learned. That is the key to what brings me back year after year to conduct youth orchestras - it is the endless hunger that they have to learn. Professionals may congratulate you after a stirring performance, perhaps compare it to others they have experienced, but it is rare that they admit that they have learned something new. For the young people of the YOA the constantly reiterated theme was their gratitude for what they have learned. How can one ever get tired of that?
At the final rehearsal just before the concert I had given a little farewell speech. I said that because of the many hours we have to practice alone, we musicians tend to become rather isolated. and sometimes self-absorbed. I told them I had a dream that they would henceforth always play and act as if they knew that music could create connection in the world.
As we said goodbye, many of them said that they had discovered something new and profound about music's power. I finally went to bed at. 4.30 am, but I was at the buses at 8 the next morning for a final round of farewells.
The orchestra went on to their final concerts in Chile, Argentina and Venezuela, I leave in three days for another trip. To New Zealand for a twelve day stint with the National Youth Orchestra, a week in Singapore speaking to 6,000 school teachers and then two weeks of rehearsals and 6 concerts with the Malaysian Philharmonic in Kuala Lumpur. Then back to Boston for the start of the new season. It is hard to imagine a more fulfilling life.
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