Victory: Khachaturian & Prokofiev

This year’s impressive performance from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra National Youth Orchestra, Te Tira Pūoro Rangatahi, marked the NYO’s 65^th anniversary and was attended by a packed house.

The musicians of the NYO are selected annually from auditionees and meet in Wellington for one week of intensive rehearsals ahead of concerts in Wellington and Palmerston North. The musicians are all under the age of 25, and the scheme provides an invaluable opportunity to play in a full orchestra with professional conductors and soloists. They also receive mentoring from the musicians of the NZSO, many of whom were seen in attendance on Friday night. Conductor Tianyi Lu took time to acknowledge the hard work of the 85 young musicians, and the support of their families and music teachers.

The short rehearsal period and the fact that these musicians are not accustomed to playing together made the ambitious scale of the repertoire all the more impressive. The evening opened with the world premiere of Jessie Leov’s Speculations on a Rainbow. Leov is the 2024 National Youth Orchestra Composer-in-Residence and will soon be travelling to Princeton University to workshop with the Edward T. Cone Composition Institute. Speculations on a Rainbow is a response to the work of Aotearoa New Zealand visual artist Judy Millar, and shifts deftly between radiant and reflective moods.

Aram Khachaturian’s piano concerto featured acclaimed 14-year-old Aotearoa New Zealand pianist Shan Liu as the soloist. Liu gave a characteristically virtuosic performance, followed by a generous encore. The final work of the evening, Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5, provided opportunities for each section to shine, and the orchestra achieved a remarkably unified sound. I would like to echo Liu in congratulating everyone involved with the NYO, especially the young musicians. It’s wonderful to see that the future of Aotearoa’s classical music is in such capable hands.