American Youth Symphony put to test at Disney Hall

The celebrated, locally based American Youth Symphony played its first concert in the Walt Disney Concert Hall on Sunday. There was also a festive pre-concert dinner to honor composer-conductor John Williams, who then opened the program by leading his short “Sound the Bells” fanfare and directing the applause toward the players.

The concert continued with the premiere of a violin concerto commissioned from Lera Auerbach, the orchestra’s composer in residence through 2006, and played smartly by twice Grammy-nominated Philippe Quint, to whom the work is dedicated. The evening closed with an AYS staple, Mahler’s First Symphony. Both works were led by music director Alexander Treger.

In this departure from its usual home at Royce Hall, UCLA, the orchestra gained new cachet. But the new hall didn’t guarantee success. There were problems of balance and focus that had long ago been solved at Royce. Williams’ three-minute fanfare, composed for a 1993 Boston Pops tour of Japan that coincided with the marriage of Crown Prince Naruhito and Masako Owada, sounded diffuse. In the Auerbach, soloist Quint was often swamped by the orchestra. Both works were new and unfamiliar, but even the Mahler First was plagued by untypical problems in security and expressivity.

In her concerto, Auerbach, one of the last artists to defect from the former Soviet Union, didn’t write down to anyone. The work is a large-scaled, 23-minute, four-movement challenge that begins with fortissimo blasts -- in her program notes, the 30-year-old composer calls them “Death-clusters.” What follows alternates between passages of lyricism and struggle, then delves into an eerie adagio that includes a musical saw providing weird, theremin-like commentary. A grim, earthbound religious meditation ensues, and the work ends in a fiery rondo that suggests -- the composer says -- no escape from life or death. Pretty heady stuff that can’t be adequately grasped on one hearing.

Quint, also a Soviet defector, played with lyricism, energy and devotion. David Weiss was the musical saw player. Everybody worked hard, and the effort and dedication showed.

The effort also showed in Mahler’s First, which AYS had played so triumphantly a few years ago in Royce. The movement that came closest to what the players achieved then was the funeral march, which began with light, buoyant taps by timpanist Kristina Gee, followed by the tender solo by bass Maren Reck. Soon everyone was back to the confident, top form that characterizes the orchestra.