In and around San Francisco, there is such wealth of talent among the very
young - from San Domenico School, to the SF Conservatory, to Berkeley's
Crowden School (where John Adams' very young children play John Adams'
difficult music, brilliantly), to the amazing SFS Youth Orchestra, and so
on - that when I saw that the Ysgol Greenhill Chamber Orchestra is coming
here, I was giddy with anticipation.

George Cleve's Midsummer Mozart Festival has invited the Welsh school
orchestra to open the season tonight in the Palace of the Legion of Honor.
I imagined a stage populated with miniature versions of Robert ap Huw,
Stuart Burrows, Geraint Evans, H from Steps, Bryn Terfel, Conway Twitty,
all trying to keep up with the Joneses - Gwyneth, Delme, Tom and Brian.

The evening opened with the school's headmaster presenting the facts:
Ysgol Greenhill is a "comprehensive" state school ("public" in the US),
with open admission policy, an "ordinary school," he said.  It is funded
to the tune of approximately $3,000 per student each year - which includes
free music education.  The school's publicity material is full of
references to festival participation (including France, Austria, Germany),
televised performances, awards, appearances in the Royal Festival Hall,
etc.

As the orchestra filed in and I spotted some 12- and 13-year-olds in the
back, I was still in a highly optimistic frame of mind; after all, didn't
the great Welsh violinist Menuhin play like an angel at that age?

The ambitious, nay, brave program:  Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 and
Sinfonia Concertante, Anton Dimler's Clarinet Concerto.  I have never heard
Dimler's music, and after tonight, that hasn't changed because I escaped at
the first opportunity - after the violin concerto.  I find it difficult to
believe that anyone of any age is put on stage (to TOUR!) to play music
like this, on the order of an early scene in "Mr.  Holland's Opus." The
soloist, a 17-year-old Zeta-Jones look-alike, plays the violin as the
beauteous Catherine acts - badly, with moxie.

I'm asking the question again, and it's not a rhetorical one, I'd really
like to find the answer:  why tour an orchestra of young people who cannot
play music anywhere near an acceptable level, never mind playing *Mozart*?
Is puzzlement.

Janos Gereben/SF
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