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Concert Observation Essay

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I attended to a concert performed by the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra on November 13th this year. This concert took place in the Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. I chose to attend to this concert because I have never been to a performance by any youth orchestra, I was curious to see how their performance would compare to other orchestras. The first of the three piece that were performed in this concert was Maenads’ Dance, from The Bassarids, composed by Hans Werner Henze. A variety of instruments were used in this piece, including woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings. There were several loud and intense parts in this piece, but there were also quiet and suspenseful parts. This piece has a quick tempo, with a few slow …show more content…

This piece has three movements, Allegro moderato, Adagio di molto, and Allegro ma non tanto. This piece starts off with a slow and expressive solo by the soloist, Alexi Kenney. The change in dynamics, the use of vibrato, and other techniques enhanced his solo. The orchestra then plays with a homophonic texture with some tempo changes. A few fast solos and a few slow ones followed. The last piece of the performance was Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Opus 54, written by Dmitri Shostakovich. This piece also has three movements, and they are Largo, Allegro, and Presto. The piece starts off with a homophonic texture, followed by several changes in tempo and dynamics. The middle of the piece was mostly very quiet and slow. The piece ended very loudly and intensely with a extremely quick tempo.
I have thoroughly enjoy this performance by the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, conducted by Christian Reif. Every aspect of the performance, from the intonations to the style, was executed flawlessly. Before this concert, I expected the quality of this performance to be worse than other concerts that I have attended to because it is a youth orchestra, but they have surprised me and proved me wrong. The orchestra played like a professional adult orchestra, and it was even one of the best orchestra performances that I have been

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