The District Of Columbia Youth Orchestra, Lyn G. McLain, Wilbert DeLaine - Opening Concert Of The 1969-70 Season FLAC

Having been a musician in youth orchestras of the Washington, DC metropolitan region and having personally known some instrumentalists in the DCYO, I picked up this album out of curiosity to get a sense of what the orchestra sounded like in 1969. (I had already heard an intriguing (to my ears) MCYO performance of Mahler’s First in 1970.) Scanning the roster some names ring a bell as possibly having gone on to become famous: Yvonne Fisher (clarinet), Geoffrey Hicks (piano).

Unfortunately this album is mediocre both artistically and technically. The orchestra plays with unsteady (and overall slow) tempo. The sound is quite non-homogenous with quirky intonation and an inability to be precise or delicate. Sour notes and open strings stick out like splinters. In some sections it produces a loud but unpleasant blob of sound, incompatible with the requests of the music. This amounts to an impression that is at times loose, bloated, weak, unbalanced, or even drunk. One glance at the roster indicates that the orchestra is oversized for the repertoire: who needs 9 violas, 6 flutes, 7 clarinets, and 5 bassoons? This is not Mahler or Bruckner! It points to the all-too-common approach in big-name youth orchestras (still today) to push for quantity over quality.

Copland’s supposedly exciting Outdoor Overture put me to sleep, though the ending is strong. Violinist Wilbert DeLaine’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s concerto, although amateurish and a bit unrefined, manages to project a youthful energy and is quite good considering he was a college student at the time of this recording. His caliber is a fair ways above that of the orchestra. My senses dulled after sitting through sub-par performances of three works, I was pleasantly surprised by the final number, “Alleluia for Orchestra” by 20th century contemporary Arnold Freed. The loud and bombastic cacophony that this work calls for is perhaps better suited for such an ensemble. Strength in numbers ends up redeeming itself as one is impressed by the awesomely huge sound that this orchestra can generate. The effectiveness of this last piece compelled me to rate the album at two stars instead of merely one. In this relatively unfamiliar work one can detect strands of similarity to the compositions of Roy Harris. The fact that it was first published in 1969 makes me wonder if this recording is a world premier.

The recording suffers from an unhappy combination of low level and modest dynamic range (competing surface noise does nothing to help). Frequency response maxes out around 16 kHz, merely “FM quality”. The low end sounds boomy, especially those timpani. One could imagine that the microphones were picking up their vibrations through the stage floor. Yes, it’s in stereo, but inferiorly so. The balance shifts weirdly: at the beginning it is biased right, then biased left, then at some point it pops into balance. Imaging is not clear. The sense of ambience is not very good. An annoying high-frequency buzz plagues the Schubert. So much for Jerry Lewis’s “Dimension 70 Recording System”, whatever benefit it’s supposed to provide.

According to liner notes, the group was chosen to perform in the International Youth Orchestra Festival in Switzerland in August, 1970. Unless the DCYO radically stepped up their game by the end of the concert season, it appears that the outlook for world-class youth orchestras in 1970 was pretty bleak. But I suppose it’s unfair to judge this record from the grounds of professional expectations. Perhaps I have been spoiled by the consistently impressive quality of my home region’s Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras (whose convincing performances would catch the ear of any average classical enthusiast) and the technical quality which 21st century digital recording can afford even to low-budget amateur productions.