Review

Leeds Town Hall

The world premiere of Larry Goves’ The Rules, a complex 25-minute work composed especially for the 160-strong National Youth Orchestra, opened this invigorating concert conducted by Paul Daniel. Goves gives the young musicians a degree of freedom to create sound patterns and then break them.

Many of the sonorities are eerily beautiful and there is some striking writing for all sections of the orchestra. The NYO responded to the challenge with their customary brilliance. But I have to admit that by the end of the piece I wondered just how much of the score was composed by a human being and how much by computer.

There can be no such qualms about Mahler’s mighty Fifth Symphony, played here with the eloquence, grandeur and injection of adrenalin that could count as a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

The NYO’s string section alone totalled 90, giving the famous Adagietto – liberated by Paul Daniel from any hint of wallowing sentimentality – a luxuriant and subterranean depth.

Stunning individual contributions included the bleak trumpet solo which opens the symphony and the principal horn leading the rustic-sounding Scherzo.

The NYO is, of course, much more than the sum of its parts. It is an inspirational body of gifted teenage musicians all listening to each other and responding as a team to the palette of instrumental colours etched by conductor Paul Daniel.

This former music director of Opera North guided his young players, and the enthusiastic audience on the symphony’s journey from stygian darkness into incandescent light.

Geoffrey Mogridge