Two years ago, the American Soviet Youth Orchestra was formed in a pioneering attempt to bring together the best young musicians from the two superpowers. The ASYO has proved a resounding success, directly and indirectly affecting millions of people, and justifying the high hopes of its founders. As the ASYO would up its summer 1990 tour of three continents with concerts in New York and Philadelphia this past August, it treated its audiences to the highest levels of musical performance and programming, achievements hard to recall or imagine for any youth orchestra.
Complex Organization
The brainchild of S. Frederick Starr, president of Oberlin College in Ohio and a prominent Sovietologist, the American Soviet Youth Orchestra was founded, in Starr's words, "to prove that Russians and Americans can cooperate in one of the most complex human organizations of all: a symphony orchestra." The orchestra was created by the Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College and the Moscow State Conservatory as a biennial summer event, bringing together a hundred accomplished young musicians (this year seventeen to twenty-four year olds), fifty from each country. The Soviet musicians this summer all came from the Moscow State Conservatory, while Oberlin auditioned 1,000 instrumentalists from around the country for the American half.
"It's unheard of to put an orchestra together this quickly," Starr says. "We accomplished what normally takes orchestras one or two years to do. The conductors had just days to rehearse twenty-four works and to transform 100 extremely talented but disparate individuals into a major orchestra and into a third nationality." The orchestra's six-week tour spanned twenty-nine concerts in twenty-one cities in the Soviet Union, Europe, and the United States, and the ensemble consistently received standing ovations and rave reviews.
Superb Ensemble
A chamber concert at New York's World Financial Center on August 29 showed off what could be called the heart of the orchestra - its superb ensemble of string players, predominantly Soviet. The Russian violin tradition, of course, goes back to the nineteenth century and the great line of virtuosi established by Leopold Auer. A luscious, warm tone and smooth, almost seamless bowing technique characterizes the Russian school, and was evident from the first notes of the string players of the ASYO. The thirteen young Russian musicians played in ways very evocative of eighteenth-century traditions; they played standing, arranged in a close semicircle, without a conductor. (A few conservative groups, like the Solisti Veneti, still preserve this custom.) It made for close rapport and tight ensemble, with much body language to cue each other.
The results were simply superb, even in the vastness of the open auditorium with its 120-foot ceiling. (An acoustical shell threw the sound forward, and although amplification was used, it was subtle and inoffensive). Smooth, sustained tone dominated, with the soloists demonstrating what could be called a typically outstanding command of technique.
The first work, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, was a perfect choice. Vivaldi, after all, was writing for the financially powerful Venetian elite; I'm sure he would have greatly enjoyed having his music played
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