Thies, Youth Symphony Tame Brahms

Admirably consistent and neatly polished, the American Youth Symphony continues to carry on its useful assignment as a training orchestra, providing experience for its members, free concerts for the Westside community and a showcase for gifted soloists.

Robert Thies certainly fits the last description. A prizewinning pianist, he continues to fulfill the exceptional promise first shown when he took the gold medal in the Second International Prokofiev Competition in 1995. Sunday night in Royce Hall at UCLA, Thies joined the American Youth Symphony and conductor Alexander Treger in one of the great challenges of the repertory, Brahms’ D minor Piano Concerto.

He did not make it seem easy--no one has ever done that to a work that utterly characterizes struggle and aspiration--but he made it seem natural. He took all its difficulties in stride, brought all the appropriate colors to its realization and tamed its vehemence as commandingly as he revealed its poetry.

Technical considerations seemed swept aside in the way Thies mastered the musical materials and gave them life and clarity.

This was a splendid performance, Brahmsian in breadth as well as sincerity and depth.

Thies dedicated the performance to the memory of one of his former teachers, Robert Turner, who died last month.

After a tentative opening, Treger and the orchestra collaborated wholeheartedly, especially in a colorful and affectionate exploration of the faceted slow movement. The finale, all heart and fleetness, bounded to its exuberant conclusion.

Treger and his ensemble began the program with a lithe and clarified reading of Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 (“Paris”), and with a careful and untroubled run-through of Arnold Schoenberg’s “Verklarte Nacht” (Transfigured Night).