Sydney Youth Orchestra Leaves On An Intrepid Voyage
In April, 86 of Sydney Youth Orchestras’ most talented young musicians aged 16 to 25 and drawn from the greater Sydney region, embark on a landmark music education tour of Europe.
The Sydney Youth Orchestra’s European tour will visit magnificent cities that are hubs of music, commencing in Vienna and travelling through Budapest, Salzburg, Prague and Berlin.
The tour will give students the opportunity to perform in world-renowned venues and more importantly, give these young musicians the opportunity to work and develop connections with the world’s leading classical musicians and attend performances by world-class orchestras.
Sydney Youth Orchestras is celebrating this incredible educational opportunity for our city’s future musicians by showcasing some of the repertoire that will be performed and workshopped overseas in a performance at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. For this, the Sydney Youth Orchestra will harness the massive forces required for Mussorgsky’s perennial favourite known simply as Pictures. Many will know and love all 10 movements of Mussorgsky’s descriptive masterwork, but in particular the final depiction of The Great Gate of Kiev will feature in SYO’s last concert in Berlin on Friday 21 April.
During the tour, the musicians will undertake masterclasses with four of the great orchestras of today – the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the Vienna, Berlin and Czech Philharmonic Orchestras. Additionally, SYO alumnus and professional cellist, Peter Morrison (member of the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra) has invited eight of our musicians to rehearse and perform with the Copenhagen Youth Chamber Orchestra immediately following the end of our tour in Berlin. The Australian Ambassador will be attending the performance and will welcome them to Denmark. These eight pre-professional Sydney Youth Orchestra musicians will also perform for the official Australian Government ANZAC commemorations in Copenhagen.
The Sydney Youth Orchestra was founded as a single orchestra in 1973 by the visionary music educator and conductor, Peter Seymour. In 44 years it has grown to become a community of over 500 young musicians, aged 6-24, from all over Sydney and beyond. They gather weekly for rehearsals in the city and now in Western Sydney, in twelve different ensembles carefully constructed to match skill, age and experience. Together they inspire excellence, presenting public concerts and performing in major community events such as Carols in the Domain, vibrant family concerts for very young children, an annual Music Summer School, and outreach programs including concerts and workshops in regional NSW.
The SYO celebrates and recognises the thousands of young musicians who have nurtured their love of orchestral music, learned important life skills, had formative experiences and made lifelong friends during their time in the ensemble. Many of them have gone on to careers as professional musicians. They secure leading positions in all the major Australian orchestras and internationally.
The Itinerary:
Workshops with Tobias Lea, solo viola in the Vienna Philharmonic, with the Budapest Festival Orchestra with Ondřej Vrabec, Assistant to the Chief Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic, with Steffen Tast, violinist in the RundfunkSinfonieorchester Berlin, with Stanley Dodds, violinist in the Berlin Philharmionic. Meet with members of the Orchestra Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic
Collaborations with the Junges Ensemble, Berlin Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Copenhagen
Attending a performance at the Vienna State Opera, a rehearsal and concert of the Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by Victor Aviat, a concert of the Musicians of the Staatskapelle Dresden featuring Daniil Trifonov, a rehearsal of the Czech Philharmonic conducted by Semyon Bychkov featuring Katia and Marielle Labèque, rehearsal of the RundfunkSinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Frank Strobel, a performance at the Berlin Philharmonie conducted by Simon Rössler.
