The National Youth Orchestra of the USA is restricted to those aspiring musicians aged 16-19, but just because they are young and still developing their talents doesn’t mean they don’t perform to a very high standard.
Their treatment of the Gershwin Piano Concerto was excellent and they all worked in harmony with both the conductor Karina Canellakis and soloist Krill Gerstein.
Before leaving the stage for the interval the Karina, who is also an accomplished violinist, and Krill performed an encore duet of an extract of Ravel’s work. Very enjoyable; however, I thought that this was stealing a bit of thunder from the orchestra which I was really there to celebrate.
The second half consisting of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra was equally well played. These budding performers deserve much more support than the far too many empty seats I observed. More needs to be done by the EIF to ensure this doesn’t recur.
Performance on 10 August 2026.
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