Concert Critique On December 5th, 2011, I went to see the North Sound Youth Symphony’s Fall 2011 Concert, which was held at Western Washington University’s Department of Music. I arrived there a little late with Haebin while the Philharmonia, conducted by Morgan Schwab, was already playing their first piece, the third movement of Symphony No. 4 by Franz Joseph Haydn.
Haebin and I didn’t want to disrupt the audience and the players so we sat down outside in the hall way waiting for their first piece to be done. While we were sitting down, we were able to hear their performance and I knew right away that they spent lot of time working on it even though the sound was shrouded by the doors. Crescendos and decrescendos were able to be heard and they were in sync. They knew what they were doing. After the first piece was done, we entered the auditorium through the last door and sat as their second piece was being introduced by their conductor. Their second song was “March to the Scaffold” movement from “Symphonie Fantastique” written by Hector Berlioz. This song was greatly played. It did sound like people marching through the crowd with braveness but little bit rowdy like an actual march would sound and look like. Although, the Philharmonia is harmonized with younger musicians, they had it down even though it sounded like it would’ve been a challenging piece to them.
As the Philharmonia hustled down the stage with piercing claps, the Symphony filled the stage. I recognized a couple of people in the symphony orchestra, Tucker and Shannon. Their tuning took a lot longer than a usual orchestra would because of their picky conductor, Grant Donnellan. An endless sound of A string filled up the auditorium, causing them to become so drowsy that the audience was starting to fall asleep or drool on their seats. Once they were finally done tuning, Grant introduced their first piece, “Elegie” by Faure. Haebin whispered to me about how it was one of the songs that she looked up to play as solo on her cello. It was a beautiful song but the slowness of it kept me away from fully enjoying the song. I like some slow songs but this was just not the style that I like. The cello soloist was Maya Enstad, an 8th grader. She got every notes down like it was piece of cake, and her performance and sound was gorgeous and with the orchestra playing in the background aggrandized the beauty of the song. However, it wasn’t my style after all. Of course, they received a standing ovation, waking up some of people that were asleep. They tuned once again for their next piece, “Barber of Seville” written by Gioachino Rossini. When Haebin heard the title of this song, she was all excited and happy that it scared me a little bit; apparently she heard this song once from a musical or something when she was young. I had no idea what this song was but after about 1/4 through the song, I recognized the melody but I couldn’t remember where I heard it from. I loved the style of this piece so much that my body just started moving along to the tune and Haebin described me as a crazy, happy little kid. The pizzicato and staccatos of violas and cellos gave the light feeling and with the melody combined, it filled the auditorium with happiness. Percussions played a big role in this piece that I don’t think it would’ve sounded
