Young Scottish Musicians Lured to S.D. for Tour

In the cultural history of San Diego, the 1987 Edinburgh International Festival holds a unique place of honor. While attending this prestigious annual music and drama festival, San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor is supposed to have received the inspiration for San Diego’s upcoming Soviet arts festival. At the 1987 Edinburgh festival she also invited one of Scotland’s cultural institutions, the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra, to visit San Diego.

Members of the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra took the mayor’s invitation seriously and immediately began planning their first North American tour to celebrate the orchestra’s 25th anniversary in 1989. While the mayor may not be attending the youth orchestra’s Symphony Hall performance tonight, the enthusiasm of the Scottish musicians is undimmed. On their two-week California tour, they will perform six concerts from San Diego to Salinas. With the cooperation of several local groups, including the San Diego-Edinburgh Sister City Society and the San Diego Youth Symphony, the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra was able to arrange three local concerts. Under the baton of maestro Christopher Adey, they performed at Oceanside’s El Camino High School on Friday night, will play a formal concert at 8 p.m. in Symphony Hall today, and will give a free concert Sunday afternoon at 3 at Balboa Park’s Casa Del Prado.

Each concert of the tour opens with David Dorward’s “Golden City,” a new work by the Edinburgh-based Scottish composer. Contrary to the image of the chronically frugal Scotsman, the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra commissioned the work to perform on the tour.

The orchestra also sponsored a competition to select a soloist for the tour, an event that celebrates the orchestra’s 25th anniversary. Adey described the new piece as a kind of tone poem that uses typical Scottish folk tunes.

“The ‘Golden City’ was commissioned by the orchestra last Easter,” Adey said. “Although Dorward wrote it for a youth orchestra, it’s not an easy piece. Nothing in it is comfortable for the orchestra--he did not write down to these young players.

“His is an individual style, not particularly forward-looking. While it has a tight rhythmic structure and a bit of a neoclassical feel, it doesn’t completely fit that label.”

Earlier this week, Adey was working on the Dorward piece with his 101-member ensemble at San Diego State University, where the visiting orchestra was encamped for five days to polish its programs for its two-week tour. He discussed the orchestra outside the SDSU band room after a morning rehearsal.

“The players range in age from 14 to 21, but most are 16 or 17. The orchestra plays two concerts a year over the Easter holidays, one in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall and the second in an outlying area of the city. Only about 50% of the strings who audition for the orchestra are accepted. Touring is not a regular facet of the orchestra’s schedule, although the ensemble played a number of cities in West Germany five years ago.”

Adey has conducted the youth orchestra for five seasons. Although its purpose is performance, not many of the players will pursue music professionally.

“The percentage of those choosing a musical career is difficult to say, perhaps about 10-15%. The majority go on to the university to read other subjects.”

For 19-year-old French horn player Fiona Henderson, now a student at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Dance in Glasgow, the experience of playing four years in the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra confirmed her inclinations to pursue music more seriously.

“The youth orchestra got excellent coaches who gave us training we would not have been able to get otherwise. And I would never have dreamed of playing in those grand concert halls as a teen-ager had I not been in the youth orchestra,” said Henderson.

A professor of conducting at London’s Royal College of Music, Adey is a taskmaster who keeps his demands high but his voice low when working with young musicians.

“He’s very encouraging and lets us know when we do well,” said violist Alison Montgomery from Edinburgh. “He’s not one to lose his temper.”

While Adey is a specialist in conducting British youth orchestras, his podium career is not limited to that genre. His familiarity with London orchestras led to an invitation to conduct the London Symphony Orchestra in John Schlesinger’s 1988 film with Shirley MacLaine, “Madame Sousatzka.”

Violinist Edward Dusinberre of the Royal College of Music, the orchestra’s competition winner, will perform Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G Minor on the Symphony Hall concert and Ernest Chausson’s “Poeme” on the Sunday afternoon program. Dusinberre, 20, who spent his teen years as the concertmaster of the London-based National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, has high praise for the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra.

“They are very communicative, and they enjoy what they are doing,” Dusinberre said. “They listen well, which makes them sympathetic accompanists. I can do what I want when I’m playing with them.”

The youth orchestra’s tour is not limited to rehearsing and performing, however. Last Thursday, orchestra members spent the day at San Diego’s Sea World, and, along the tour, they will visit Disneyland and other California theme parks.