Review: "Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra navigates difficult scores with panache under new music director's baton"

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has published a review Brett Mitchell's first concert as Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra. "Mitchell introduced himself to Cleveland audiences Sunday afternoon at Severance Hall, when he led the ensemble in an imaginatively programmed concert that featured mostly modern music. It was a pleasure to hear the young musicians navigate this difficult music with such maturity, alert to internal balances and complex intonations and, thanks to Mitchell’s very clear baton, confident with Stravinsky’s [Symphonies of Wind Instruments] peculiar rhetoric throughout. COYO’s strings were nothing short of breathtaking throughout. They played with supreme confidence and technical brilliance, and Mitchell’s grasp of the score ensured that [Wojciech Kilar’s] Orawa...was the surprise hit of the concert. In [Pictures at an Exhibition], one could sense that certain passages were pushing the young players close to their limits... But such individual moments were easily overcome by the players’ youthful energy and commitment to the score – and Mitchell’s leadership assured that the overall result was artistically sound and, for the young players, a real triumph." To read the complete review, please click here.