Young Musicians Refresh the Classics

Exhilaration, thrills and awe conquer audiences faced with the irrepressible virtuosity and musical achievement of emerging young performers. These are the stock in trade of Young Artists International, the touring consortium of competition-winning musicians from 18 countries, which concluded its third Southern California visit over the weekend.

Six public events made up this summer’s local season. These events presented the 28 young artists in solo performances, in chamber groups and as the chamber orchestra I Palpiti, conducted by YAI founder Eduard Schmieder, a serious and resourceful podium personality.

Under Schmieder, the ensemble played Friday night at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood on the Summer Nights series presented by the L.A. County Arts Commission. Saturday night, six of the players gave an incandescent performance of French chamber music in Zipper Hall at Colburn School of Performing Arts, downtown.

As in the mini-festival’s previous summers, these were take-your-breath-away demonstrations of musicianship and technique. These young people, in particular those heard Saturday--violinists Alexandru Tomescu and Liza Kerob, violist Yoko Hatoyama, cellists Evgeni Sakakuschev and Adolfo Gutierrez Arenas, and pianist Valentina Lisitsa--have all the technical, musical and interpretive resources to make important music sound its best.

Fresh revivals of Ernest Chausson’s Piano Trio, Opus 3, and Cesar Franck’s Piano Quintet, as well as two movements from Maurice Ravel’s Sonata for violin and piano, reestablished the wonders in each work, stressing the depths of each, its contrasts, its many beauties.

The Quintet was polished to a shine, all its facets on view, especially its lyric peaks, as shown most touchingly in the wide-ranging slow movement.

Friday night at the Ford, veteran violinist Ida Haendel--co-founder, with Schmieder, of YAI--and 19-year-old violist David Garrett were the soloists with I Palpiti. With Schmieder conducting, they achieved a memorable, luminous, deeply moving performance of Mozart’s familiar Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364.

After the opening Allegro, the wind blew Garrett’s music over, and the great slow movement had to be begun anew; the result was an even greater focus and concentration on the work’s continuity and sublime content--a great performance from all the participants.

The evening began with an astounding demonstration of seamless and beauteous string playing in Georges Enescu’s “Prelude a l’unisson,” a piece Schmieder found in a museum in Bucharest last year. The program ended with a happy romp through Camille Saint-Saens’ “Carnival of the Animals,” in which the soloists were the duo-pianists Valentina Lisitsa and Alexei Kuznetsoff and the jolly, clear-speaking narrator was L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.