LINCOLN CENTER
Alice Tully Hall
Young Concert Artists Series Gala
"Young Concert Artists’ track record for spotting the best new talent in classical music is legendary.”
– The New York Times
– The New York Times
“Brilliant, ravishing, dazzling, enormously exciting! We should be grateful to this series for getting us as worked up over young artists as we do!"
- High Fidelity/ MusicalAmerica
- High Fidelity/ MusicalAmerica
“YCA’s track record in singling out the stars of tomorrow is mind-boggling!”
– The Washington Post
– The Washington Post
“Attending the debut of an unknown musica is often a risk at best. However, with young Concert Artists, music lovers can know without a doubt that they are hearing la crème de la crème from around the world.”
– The Huffington Post
– The Huffington Post
“The Young Concert Artists Series sparkles with talent.”
– The New York Times
– The New York Times
With gratifying predictability, Young Concert Artists once again showcased three performers clearly bound for stardom in its annual gala concert on Tuesday evening at Alice Tully Hall. Over 55 years, the organization’s track record in fostering the careers of rising performers has been remarkable, and it only distinguished itself further here.
By far the safest bet was Julia Bullock, 29, an American soprano who won first prize in the 2012 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, among several other awards. She has already established a career that many a veteran might envy, having recently sung the lead in Peter Sellars’s production of Kaija Saariaho’s “La Passion de Simone” for the Berlin Philharmonic’s Orchestra Academy, a role she will repeat next month at the Ojai Festival in California.
Here Ms. Bullock sang Samuel Barber’s masterpiece from 1947, “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” based on a highly atmospheric text from the prologue to James Agee’s novel “A Death in the Family.” She rendered the gorgeous yet not oversweet melodies beautifully, but there was much more than mere vocal allure: superb diction and a compelling stage manner that would have communicated much of the meaning even if the words had not registered so clearly.
Aleksey Semenenko, 27, a Ukrainian violinist and another winner in the 2012 auditions, opened the concert with an elegant account of Mozart’s Concerto No. 5 and was also notable for a lively stage presence. He played with almost unfailing purity of tone, but also with wonderful spontaneity and humor.
Mozart supplied many odd little flourishes in this work and Mr. Semenenko adopted Robert Levin’s latter-day cadenzas, yet the impetus in all of these seemed to be coming from Mr. Semenenko himself; if you didn’t know better, you might have thought that he was making them up on the spot.
Yun-Chin Zhou, 26, a Chinese pianist and the first-prize winner of the 2013 auditions, provided the capper with Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 3, and it was sensational. Mr. Zhou negotiated Prokofiev’s prickly passagework at blistering speeds with immaculate fingering. As bravura pianism, the performance was brilliant and told much, though it gave little idea how Mr. Zhou might fare in more lyrical or Romantic fare. What’s more, for all of Mr. Zhou’s huge technique, his sound was not notably large, even in this intimate hall.
The Orchestra of St. Luke’s displayed its usual versatility throughout, conducted by Michael Stern, the music director of the Kansas City Symphony, who had also obviously worked fruitfully with the soloists. Of the many fine individual contributions from the orchestra, note should be made of the playing of Stephen Taylor on oboe and English horn, especially in some glorious Barber moments.
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