sic. I ask, ‘Why do we phrase it this way? Why does the resolution go in this direction?’ And young people want to know the story behind the music, or be encouraged to create a story in their own minds. This is not something you have time to do in a professional orchestra.”
Mark Garvin
Growing Up with Youth
The Philadelphia Youth Orchestra performs under Music Director/Executive Director Louis Scaglione; on June 6 he will lead PYO’s 70th-anniversary concert in Philadelphia’s Verizon Hall.
morale” in a youth orchestra. “It’s good for the growth of the program and for the educational experience, and it’s good to keep everybody busy,” including the lower brass and percussion, a fact that accounts for the hefty proportion of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century works in the repertoire of advanced youth orchestras. And the nation’s largest orchestral ensembles are indeed the youth orchestras, a fact owing to both financial realities—youth-orchestra players are not only unpaid, but in most cases pay tuition—and to the goal of inclusiveness. But the more modestly scaled music of a composer like Schubert presents another kind of challenge for youth orchestras, Petersen notes: “This is an aesthetic that they might not naturally gravitate to the way they would to a big showpiece. Kids today are so technically advanced—they can play fast and loud and really have the chops. But as for subtle interpretation of music like Schubert’s, that’s a completely foreign world to them. I was very impressed with Slatkin’s ability to inspire the kids with the Symphonie fantastique, but he’s right: on a really simple level, the kind of work that’s done in the Classical repertoire, from Mozart through Schubert, is a different orchestral experience. Especially for the string players—they need experience and practice with this type of music.” Like many such programs, Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras has grown over the years by establishing feeder orchestras and skills-based training. With its four orchestras, a chamber ensemble, two summer training programs, and what Radcliffe calls
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“a very big portfolio of public-school partnership programs,” the $1.5 million SYSO organization is arguably the largest youthorchestra program in the nation, serving more than 1,100 students with a wide range of skill levels. Radcliffe, one year into his second threeyear contract as music director, came to SYSO in 2004 after directing orchestral and operatic activities at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Armed with a master’s degree in education from New England Conservatory as well as a master’s in conducting from the University of Michigan, he has led youth orchestra programs throughout the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Asia. He now heads an organization that was once nearly synonymous with the youth-orchestra music directorship as vocational calling: SYSO’s first conductor, Francis Aranyi, led the orchestra for seventeen years beginning in 1942; his successor, Vilem Sokol, for the next 28. Does Radcliffe see himself as a career youth-orchestra conductor? “I just try to make music every day, and there is nothing more beautiful than to stand in front of 120 extremely talented young musicians each week,” he says. “They can play virtually anything. I don’t come ‘down’ to their level—I’m not sure I would know how to do that. I don’t beat time in a really big way; I maintain the quality of my conducting. “One thing that makes it different than conducting a professional orchestra is that you have a chance to talk about techniques and musical concepts that they can carry through to playing sonatas or chamber mu-
Independent youth-orchestra programs in numerous large cities have long been magnets for young talent, drawing serious avocational and would-be professional musicians from throughout the metro area. In other large and not-so-large cities, youth-orchestra training has been taken on not by independent organizations but as a vital arm of the city’s principal orchestra. A third paradigm exists in other areas, where youth-orchestra training is the province of one or more independent organizations, but supported educationally by the city’s principal orchestra. The Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra, for example, is independent from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in all governing, administrative, and financial matters, but has enjoyed an artistic affiliation with the PSO since 1962. Washington, D.C., and its suburbs are home to many youth orchestras, none of them affiliated with the National Symphony Orchestra, but since 1978 the NSO has mentored the area’s best young musicians by assembling a regional youth orchestra each spring for intensive rehearsals and a concert at the Kennedy Center. In the Bay Area, directing a high-level youth orchestra is not only an essential part of the job for a staff conductor at the San Francisco Symphony, but an important waystation en route to a career as music director of a professional orchestra. When Donato Cabrera joined the artistic staff of the SFS last fall, he came with a two-part title: assistant conductor of the orchestra and Wattis Foundation Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. Since the SFSYO’s founding in 1981—its first music director was Jahja Ling, now music director of the San Diego Symphony— this youth orchestra has been an integral part of the San Francisco Symphony’s educational mission. Extensive sectional coaching is provided by the SFS musicians, in sessions that take place each Saturday prior to the rehearsal of the full youth orchestra. SFS Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, a symphony
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