MUSIC REVIEWS : DEBUT ORCHESTRA

Among local “youth” orchestras, the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra stands at the top of the pack, and Saturday evening at Royce Hall, UCLA, the ensemble reaffirmed its solid reputation.

Cellist Nathaniel Rosen, himself a YMF alumnus, and violinist Robert Chen, winner of YMF’s 1984 Debut Competition, joined with the orchestra to perform Brahms’ Double Concerto. The 1978 Tchaikovsky Competition gold medalist, not surprisingly, rendered his cello lines thoughtfully and poetically and with extraordinary command and panache. The young violinist, too, brought uncommon insight and feeling to the work; Chen’s dynamic drive, his penetrating sound and his nearly flawless technical control belong to a player who has indeed attained a high level of musical maturity. The 75 members of the orchestra also demonstrated a good deal of maturity. A well-honed, lush-sounding string body, a refulgent and often heroic brass section and several very expressive woodwind soloists make the Debut a professional orchestra in all but the literal sense. Conductor Lalo Schifrin closed the program by presiding over an attentive, energetic reading of Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. To this audience member, Schifrin seemed to be serving as little more than a human metronome--an accurate one, but one who much of the time conducts with his right hand only, and makes little differentiation between piano and forte or legato and marcato . But somehow the right messages were conveyed, and the musicians played the Concerto with an unmistakable sense of direction.

An expressive account of Ravel’s “Mother Goose” suite opened the program.