Preteen Violinist Shows Solid Technique, Instinct

The American Youth Symphony’s natural tap into the prodigy pipeline is still wide open. Music director Alexander Treger launched the orchestra’s new season, Sunday evening at Royce Hall, with one of the more prodigious players of the current crop as his soloist, violinist Ryu Goto, 12-year-old brother of Midori.

In the teeming hothouse of fast-track fiddlers, young Goto’s age-to-accomplishment ratio is hardly unprecedented. The only point of comparison for these incipient artists that really matters, however, is with the score at hand.

Which in this case was Dvorak’s elegantly faceted and unduly neglected Concerto, a signature piece for Goto’s sister more than a decade ago. His performance was sleek, poised, handsome and efficient, though he began playing with the music rather than at it only in a distinctively sassy finale. His technique seems effortless, his instincts sure and well-coached, and his tone on a three-quarter-size instrument sweet and slender.

Treger and his slightly older charges--clearly on their mettle-- overwhelmed Goto in some passages but otherwise proved sympathetic and dashing in their own right.

Now in his third season succeeding AYS founder Mehli Mehta, Treger is revealing some interesting ideas about broadening this orchestra’s repertory. To be sure, there was Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique,” long a Youth Symphony favorite. It began well, with a nuanced woodwind flutter and silken strings, but soon became a rather spotty thing, uncertain in intention and inconsistent in realization.

But, to open, there was the short and smart “Ancora” by Steven Stucky, new music advisor to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where Treger is concertmaster. A pert and powerful slice of orchestral sizzle, “Ancora” glittered here with a dash and skill every bit as prodigious on the ensemble level as Goto’s playing was individually.