The Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra performed their first concert of the 2011–2011 season, “The Planets,” in the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall at 4 p.m. on Nov. 20.
The orchestra started off with the first and fourth movements of Gustav Holst’s “The Planets”—“Mars, the Bringer of War” and “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity.”
After the piece, Conductor Maxim Eshkenazy talked about PSYO’s first international tour to his home country Bulgaria last summer.
“I want to say that I’m really proud of this orchestra,” said Eshkenazy. “We put on three concerts in three cities and performed to a full audience with people standing on the sides. One night, we had five encores!”
Eshkenazy also announced that there was a PBS SoCal documentary made about the trip called “Bulgarian Rhapsody: Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra in Bulgaria.” It was aired at 7 p.m. Sunday and at 10:30 p.m. yesterday. It will also be broadcasted again tomorrow at 12:30 p.m.
“If you clap enough at the end, there might be an encore, and the encore is really good,” Eshkenazy added before leading the orchestra for a performance of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”
The audience clapped to Eshkenazy’s satisfaction and for an encore, the orchestra performed “Main Title” from Star Wars by John Williams.
“There was also definitely a lot of pressure coming back on American soil since our last concerts were in Bulgaria, but then the music just takes you and you kind of feel relaxed and emotional to the sound,” Nicholas Yoon, a clarinetist in PSYO, said. “We definitely played our hearts out on stage; we had a standing ovation.”
PSYO’s next concert, titled “Dvorak in America,” for which they will play Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” will be held March 4 at 4 p.m. in the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall.
