NYO Extends Massively For Spectacular Prom

NYO at the BBC Proms

10th August 2024

Royal Albert Hall

Works by:
Dani Howard, Missy Mazzoli, and Mahler

Performed by:
National Youth Orchestra and NYO Inspire

Conductors:
Alexandre Bloch, Tess Jackson

by Simon Mundy

It is hard to think of the Royal Albert Hall being too tiny to contain its performers, but when it has to find platform space for the National Youth Orchestra at full strength, augmented by even younger players from its ‘junior’ branch, NYO Inspire, the RAH needs to stretch imaginatively. For the premiere of Dani Howard’s Three, Four AND…, the stage was packed. There was an extra brass section where a choir usually sits by the organ, several second-tier boxes held string players instead of listeners, and the aisles were strewn with wind instruments: something like 250 players in all. The hall suddenly became an ambient immersion bath of sound—something glorious to experience live and impossible to recreate on radio, TV, or computer, I suspect.

It’s worth quoting the 31-year-old composer’s programme note: “The piece stems from the As One melody I wrote for the NYO, which became the centre of the orchestra’s project to encourage young people to upload their own versions of the same melody.” She then joined the orchestra as Resident Artist, where “the musicians came forward with ideas they wanted me to include in the composition—all of which have been incorporated.” Somehow, Howard stitched all this into a coherent and moving work that used the huge forces at her disposal with subtlety as well as power. Such composite works are not always satisfying in their own right, but Howard is a generous and imaginative composer of great skill who understands how to write for orchestra so that the music feels of this century but not too safe. The whole extravaganza was held together from the podium by Tess Jackson, making her Proms debut as a conductor and, not too long ago, a member of the NYO herself. Frankly, if she can hold this lot together on her first appearance, she can handle anything.

The rest of the concert was directed by Alexandre Bloch, and he, if far more experienced, was also admirably clear. This was necessary because throughout, the NYO was using double and sometimes quadruple the normal number of wind and brass players. Amazingly, he managed to get them (especially the horns) to stay together and blend with finesse—essential in Mahler’s First Symphony. That work has its monumental moments, but it also has passages where the players are exposed as soloists and have to show their ability to shape and phrase as first-rate musicians. It is tempting to judge them as promising 15 to 18-year-olds, but there was no need to. For the most part, they matched any of the high standards a Proms audience would expect from top professionals. As a showcase for the coming generation, a Mahler symphony is the sternest of tests, but equally, it is so important that the players have the chance to perform it so early in their careers.

The American composer Missy Mazzoli, now in her mid-forties, was represented by her Orpheus Undone, a piece distilled from the ballet she wrote for the National Ballet of Canada. She handles the blocks of sound in a way redolent of her compatriots Michael Torke and John Adams, but that is no bad thing. Orpheus Undone could perhaps do with distilling a little further, but it is well constructed and, like Dani Howard’s work, it is important for the NYO to be tackling music from their own decade of emergence.

There is a political point to make here as well as a musical one. The National Youth Orchestra is a superb and cherished organisation, but the number of young musicians it can choose from, who are coming through schools learning instruments to a high standard, is dropping precipitously, thanks to government attacks on arts subjects in the curriculum and the inability (or unwillingness) of local authorities to provide free tuition and peripatetic music teachers. The school, city, and county youth orchestras, which were such an impressive part of the UK’s education system from the 1960s to 1990s, have been under constant and irrational pressure for most of this century. If politicians and officials were teachers themselves and belittled individual children’s development like this directly, they would be sued for bullying. We have to call them to account.

Visit the NYO’s breathtaking performance at the BBC Proms 2024 in the iconic Royal Albert Hall; find more details here.