Music Reviews : AYS Season Finale a Struggle for Group

Most of what could have gone wrong did in the American Youth Symphony’s final concert of the season in Royce Hall at UCLA. The soloist was late, the leader was nervous, and the main work on the program was out of the orchestra’s league.

Under normal circumstances, an AYS concert is an opportunity to hear talented kids playing their hearts out for music director Mehli Mehta. The strings are usually passionate if imprecise, the woodwinds sweet-toned, and the brass and percussion endearingly enthusiastic.

Sunday night, however, the obstacles the players faced defeated them. To begin with, Mehta announced that violin soloist Angel Liu was delayed in traffic. Consequently, the concert began instead of ended with Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, a work that challenges even professional orchestras with its awkward writing.

Unfortunately, Mehta’s solution in the first two movements was to take them very slowly. This exposed the orchestra’s greatest weakness, unsure intonation in the strings, to such an extent that even an exuberant and highly accurate brass section could not cover up the uncomfortable results.

After intermission, soloist Liu demonstrated a solid left hand and beautiful, porcelain colors in Chausson’s “‘Poeme” while a reduced orchestra contributed the night’s most poetic playing .

In Saint-Saens’ Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, however, even though Liu flashed moments of brilliance, she and the orchestra missed many notes and barely managed to finish together.