AYO Blog
AYO National Music Camp 2025: ‘Cinnamon Rose’ Concert Review
By Julia Hill
With the sun at maximum brightness and ice creams at maximum creaminess, the Australian Youth Orchestra’s Summer Festival at the Elder Hall was well underway. Inside, sunlight was still streaming across the stage, illuminating the player’s faces. Media and Communication participant, Elena Wittkuhn brightly welcomed the audience to the concert, bracing them for the sonic travel that was about to occur. In just two and a half hours, the concert hall would traverse the lands of Australia, America and Mexico.
The Alexander Orchestra began with Butterfly Waltz by AYO composer in residence and composition tutor, Jessica Wells. Piano, celeste and cello lines sent the audience into a fantasy land, a tender feeling of hope engulfing the Elder Hall. As the last note rung out, a shift in atmosphere could be felt, as if everyone had been transported to a parallel universe.
With the audience truly in travel-mode, it was ready for some dancing with Arturo Márquez’s Danzón No. 2 – and the orchestra really did dance! The smiles bespeckling the orchestra were a precursor to the choreography that became wilder as the music crescendoed in energy. Violinists swayed, the brass stood to belt out their fanfares, cello players twirled their cellos, and double basses twirled their players. It was so much of an extravaganza that the audience couldn’t keep their joy subdued, applause erupting in the middle of the piece.
Another Media and Communication participant, Sophia Mackson, invited violin tutor Michele Walsh to the stage for an interview. The chamber orchestra had been named after Michele, a “surprise and an honour” to the much-loved violin teacher. Michele helps her students discover new things, giving them the confidence to grow into careers of all disciplines. What a privilege it would be to learn from a teacher like her.
The Walsh Chamber Orchestra took the audience to a new dimension of sound. Director Andrew Haveron showed his versatility as a musician, first conducting Christopher Sainsbury’s String Talk and then playing in Peter Sculthorpe’s Third Sonata for Strings (Jabiru Dreaming). In Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber however, Andrew left the musicians to interpret the music on their own. In those eight minutes, the orchestra breathed and found life as one.
The interval gave way to Jessica Well’s Ainulindalë, a work that hasn’t been performed in 23 years. The Bishop Orchestra matched the darkening of the room as night fell; the strings shimmered, the winds danced. An existential rise and fall of sound concluded the piece, leaving the audience to contemplate the weight of the music.
Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier Suite was an absolute firework of a piece to end the concert. The orchestra succeeded in embodying the characters from the opera itself, almost whiplashing the audience from scene to scene. In the last few minutes, the Waltz of the Century exploded from the stage, the sound so dense it felt like the planet was opening from its core. The energy of the room was charged beyond control at the end, the audience giving a well-deserved standing ovation and the tutors cheering from the balcony.
If this concert represents the future of the Australian classical music scene, the arts sector has an exciting time ahead of it.