Classy kids

• Source: Global Times
• [10:27 June 09 2010]
• Comments

By Vera Penêda

Vera Penêda jams with a youth orchestra coming of age on its first birthday.

Shane O'Shea and the members of the Beijing Youth Orchestra rehearsing for the coming concert. Photo: Vera Penêda

On a Sunday afternoon, a 40-minute cab ride from the city center to the Shunyi area, there's only silence and not a soul on sight under the sun or the trees enjoying the open air at Dulwich College. The only sound in the school surroundings comes from the canteen. There's a mob of young musicians making a fuss with their strings and woodwinds next to a chef station and surrounded by food containers and turned over chairs.

Dressed in jeans, t-shirts and sneakers, they don't look much like a classical orchestra. Their music however, even in a dining hall, sounds otherwise, shifting between a glorious march, a funny tale and a dramatic adagio. This is the Beijing Youth Orchestra (BYO) tuning up their instruments for next Sunday's concert. Beijing's only youth orchestra, a unique musical collaboration of young musicians from international schools and the two music conservatories in Beijing, will celebrate its 1st anniversary and wrap up the school year performing classics by Tchaikovsky, Prokokfiev and Barber.

The clock marks 2:35 pm, even though it's way past 5 pm. "You're rushing, that's not the time," said the conductor to the musicians. "Let's go back again to this section." Like the set and the outfit, the time on the wall is also wrong, but it really doesn't matter, because musicians respect a different tempo.

"Marcato and furioso," the conductor said reading the classical Italian stave, "do you know what that means?" he asked the band waving his baton in the air. It means they're to deliver the sonic weight of a little boy's exciting expedition in a forest where a hungry wolf is watching. The BYO is practicing Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, a renowned composition speckled with moments of joy, sadness and fear.

"It's fun and exciting," the young musicians agree. "I have a lot of Peter's sections which are more playful and happy," said Brian Hsin, 22, from Taiwan, who plays the violin. "I 'play' the duck," said Sun Chu, 22, from Heilongjiang, whose oboe is to deliver both funny and frightening moments. "The flute part, which represents the bird, is very tough," said Anne- Claire Wang, 17, from France, because chirping sounds are tricky to get. "This fragment is technically complicated, it's used internationally for professional orchestra recruitments," explained Hsin.

In Sergei Prokofiev's tale, a particular instrument and a musical theme represent each story character. The main challenges are "the balanced combination of narrator and orchestra" and "the need to have virtuoso players on clarinet, flute, bassoon" to make sure to engage adults and children in Peter's adventure, explained Shane O'Shea, the BYO conductor and creator. The concert will be "youthful, vibrant, inspiring, and most of all putting the fun back in music," he said.