Concert Paper

Jessie Fisher

American Music

Concert Paper

9 May 2012

My Concert Experience: Greensboro Symphony Youth Orchestra

Music is something that we can all connect to, old or young. I enjoyed a concert by the Greensboro Symphony Youth Orchestra. It was composed of advanced young musicians in the high school range, and they played a suiting repertoire of music. I was not sure of what my evening would be like, for I knew it was a young group, but I was impressed at their technical abilities and musicianship. It was in a performance hall that was very nicely decorated and was a very formal setting. During my experience with the concert I had much time to reflect on the class and how my perspective of music has changed.

The orchestra was composed of the classic symphony arrangement of strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion. Being in band at my high school, I greatly enjoyed the listening to the addition of strings to the usual band instrumentation. They all came in with nice tuxes and dresses on and looked very formal and professional. They had a great stage presence and they seemed confident and well-practiced.

At the beginning of the concert, the conductors spoke about the hard work that all the young people involved in the orchestra had put in to their music. He spoke of practice and how demanding it is to be a successful musician. I was most struck by the pleasure and satisfaction that he spoke with when describing his group, as I can relate to this myself. The pieces performed that evening included Antonin Dvorak: Piano Quintet in A Major, 1st movement, George Gershwin: Lullaby for Strings, Jacques Ibert: Flute Concerto, 3rd movement, and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov: Capriccio Espagnol. My favorite piece of the evening was Flute Concerto, 3rd movement naturally as my main focus instrument is a woodwind, and I enjoyed playing flute at times myself. There weren’t a great number of pieces, but it is common for orchestral pieces to be of greater length than that of...