This past Friday night I went to see the Portland Youth Philharmonic’s Winter Concert at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. It was a nice program: varied and interesting. My main interest was in hearing the young violist Lauren Siess, who won the PYP’s concerto competition, play the Walton Viola Concerto. Lauren is a student of my Oregon Symphony colleague Brian Quincey, and I’ve heard a lot about her over the years from both him and 
others who have heard her at various competitions around the area. While this is not intended to be a ‘review’, I should at least say that Lauren played magnificently, doing her teacher, her family, and all of her colleagues in the PYP proud in the process. The Walton is easily my favorite of the three ‘big’ viola concertos in the standard repertoire (at least for violists) – rounded out by Bartòk’s unfinished effort (completed by Tibor Serly and three others over the years) and Paul Hindemith’s Der Schwanendreher. Walton, like his other 20th century English composer counterparts, was held in thrall of the viola’s essentially English sound: slightly reticent, unprepossessing, and always sounding on the verge of breaking into tears, but keeping a stiff upper lip until the very end. So he knew just what the most gorgeous register of the instrument was and was largely able to orchestrate around this register to allow an instrument which does not naturally lend itself to great projection in the concert hall (due to the quirk of its size: not enough wood and airspace within the instrument to vibrate according to its tonal register, unlike the violin and the cello – a viola of the proper proportion of its size to its register would have a body length of over 20 inches). The fact that Walton, like Elgar in his cello concerto, returns to the first movement’s lamenting melody at the close of the finale, placing the instrument at the lowest and most taciturn of its registers, is pure genius, and makes for an emotional close to a true masterpiece for the instrument.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve heard the PYP – at least since Mei Ann Chen conducted a concert in which a former student of mine played the Bartòk concerto – and I must say that I’m impressed with the quality of the playing achieved under current music director David Hattner. PYP has always been a very high quality program, and they have very competitive auditions to get into the upper orchestra. My only wish was that there had been some balance issues better attended to – the principal horn was stridently loud throughout the Mahler Fourth Symphony – and that the music had been allowed to breathe a bit more, especially in the sublime, slow, third movement. These are mere quibbles, however. It was a joy to hear all of the young musicians play their hearts out.