The NY Phil's Young People's Concerts, the world's longest running family concert series, had already been around for 34 years when Leonard Bernstein took them over after becoming the Phil's music director in 1958. But, Lenny took things to another level, personally leading 53 YPC concerts over the next 14 years, all of them broadcast nationally on CBS and internationally to more than 40 countries. An entire generation first learned about everything from Mode to Melody through these broadcasts, which appealed to both adults and children. Looking back on the concerts years later, Bernstein referred to them as being "among my favorite, most highly prized activities of my life."
The Philharmonic has never stopped hosting its Young People's Concerts, which returned to Avery Fisher Hall on Saturday afternoon, hosted by by the Phil's Education Director, Ted Wiprud. (Sadly, the YPC's are no longer on TV: a sign of the times.) This season, each YPC is exploring a single masterwork to illuminate different facets of the orchestra; previous concerts have examined Beethoven's Ninth and Mozart's Jupiter Symphony.
Satruday's concert featured Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946), in which Britten took a Rondo by Henry Purcell and wrote a series of 17 variations, each highlighting a different part of the orchestra. After each variation, Wiprud and a pair of young actors playing the parts of Purcell (Kyle Ikuma) and Britten (Oliver Neubauer) interjected with useful insights on what we were about to hear. (There are no program notes for the YPC's.) Beforehand, the Phil played a short set of variations on "Happy Birthday, Benjamin," in honor of Britten's centennial.
In between the Young Person's Guide and a selection from Britten's "Four Sea Interludes" from Peter Grimes, the Philharmonic presented Music for Fukushima—a musical exchange program between young students in NYC and Fukushima, Japan, which is still recovering from the tsunami-caused nuclear disaster. The project was initiated by the Phil's unique Young Composers Project, founded by former Associate Principal bassist Jon Deak in 1995 to give public school children, aged 9–13, the opportunity to compose and orchestrate their own music and hear it performed live by the Philharmonic.
Here, the Japanese students were asked to write "musical postcards" about their lives and dreams, to which the New York kids responded with their own pieces. Karin Utagawa, 13, wrote the haunting arpeggio-filled Wave, to which Julia Arancio, 12, responded with Unity, using similar arpeggios but further developed. Austin Celestin, 11, filled his City Life with the sounds of New York birds and car horns, while Jake O'Brien, 13—who says Wynton Marsalis is his favorite composer—wrote Happy Life in big-band jazz mode. "My Dad said this was like getting the keys to a Lamborghini," O'Brien told Wiprud. After, Wiprud told me that the NYC students not only wrote their own music, but orchestrated the Japanese works as well.
Before the concert, there were four other young composers who had their music performed by a smaller set of Philharmonic musicians during the interactive Kidzone Live! fair in the atrium: Clare Cunningham, Mondriana Villegas, Benjamin Banker, and Sebastian Gonzalez, who also conducted his own piece. It's way too early to tell if any of these kids will end up as tomorrow's Caroline Shaw, but props to Deak, Wiprud, and the Phil for giving them the best launching pad any aspiring composer could hope for.
The final Young People's Concert of the season will be on April 12, featuring Brahms' Piano Concerto with Paul Lewis; details and ticket info here. More pics on the photo page.