Bruckner’s Emotional Ninth Challenges Debut Orchestra

Music of technical flash is rarely a problem for a dynamic young collective such as the YMF Debut Orchestra. Troubles arise more often in long-spanned music of sustained line and weight, which is precisely where YMF music director Wilson Hermanto challenged himself and his orchestra Sunday afternoon at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre.

A monument of central European expansiveness and emotional exaltation such as Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony is certainly a worthy project for this ensemble and conductor but is probably best considered as a work in progress. There was much promise apparent Sunday, from the powerfully developed initial buildup to the hammering fury of the scherzo.

But there were also conspicuous signs of lapsed concentration, from inconsistent phrasing and articulation to the persistent difficulty building a consensus about pitch. Also prevalent seemed to be the notion that soft means insubstantial.

Hermanto certainly has a serious vision of the piece, as sound and as feeling. He recognized climaxes readily and worked hard to maintain confidence and direction. His powers of integration were sorely taxed, however, by both his players and the composer.

Martinu’s “Memorial to Lidice,” with which Hermanto opened the concert, is in some ways another Bruckner slow movement, only 50 years later and with the tragedy unrelieved. Written in memory of the Czech village wiped out by the Nazis, it stalks in repetitive circles around pillars of blazing brass, its energies carefully accumulated and then vehemently dispersed.

It is also of more manageable length, about a third of either of Bruckner’s framing movements. Hermanto and his orchestra dealt with it passionately, firm in sound and sure in course.

In this context, Prokofiev’s elegant and sardonic Violin Concerto in D, No. 1, appeared almost as a confection, though like the Bruckner symphony it is basically two slower, reflective movements wrapped around a scorching scherzo.

YMF alumna Searmi Park returned as the mercurial protagonist, playing with lively intelligence and expressive grace. Her violin can sound nasal on the lower strings, sweet and pure in the ascent, and Park capitalized cannily on both aspects.

Hermanto and the Debut Orchestra accompanied her sympathetically, alert to shifting tides of balance and color.