Among the first musical events of the summer, a special evening took place, which aroused optimism among the audience. On June 15, the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, conducted by 83-year-old British chief musician Benjamin Zander, performed at the Christos Lambrakis Hall. The soloist was 22-year-old dynamically developing cellist Zlatomir Fung.

To avoid confusion, this is not the youth orchestra of the famous Boston Symphony Orchestra, that is, the second oldest orchestra in the United States, founded in 1881 and one of the five most significant in the country, but the youth orchestra of the Boston Philharmonic, which was founded in 1979 by Yander himself. This young ensemble was formed in 2012 under the direction of music director Panda Zander and performs regularly in Boston, as well as in the most important halls of the world in Amsterdam, Vienna, Berlin and other places. In Athens, the orchestra’s program included Maurice Ravel’s Waltz, Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. An ensemble with a huge number of strings entered the stage of the Christos Lambrakis Hall. The first thing to pay attention to is his discipline, as the result can easily end up either chaotic or unbearably tense. On the contrary, Jander kept the young musicians in complete control and even extracted from them a sound of often excellent quality and well-controlled dynamics. This is very well manifested in the “Waltz”, which, after all, enables the symphony ensemble to manifest precisely the above-mentioned qualities.

As is often the case in the US, Jander prefaced the works by explaining the circumstances in which they were written, their content, and therefore what audiences should expect from listening. Obviously, it is very difficult to achieve a successful performance of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony by teenagers, no matter how experienced and qualified the teacher may be. Not because young people lack technique, but because no matter how much you explain in words the conditions that the composer experienced in the Soviet Union under Stalin, even adults find it difficult to catch tension, tension and discomfort in their interpretation, especially in calmer verses. So basically we heard an extremely pleasant lyrical sound and a relatively better delivery of mechanistic, “modern” passages of music.

But there was also the outstanding cellist Zlatomir Fung, the only American artist in the last 40 years to win first prize at the Tchaikovsky Cello Competition. In the already very emotionally charged Elgar Concerto, Fung gave a correspondingly intense interpretation, characterized by plasticity and expressiveness, especially in the very beautiful lyrical parts. Over the years, there is likely to be greater freedom of expression.