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Congratulations to the Westmorland Youth Orchestra on its 60th birthday. I’m amazed that it’s the same age as my dad, and what’s more that it’s the very same age as the National Youth Orchestra: a glowing sign that Kendal has always kept pace with the mainstream.
I can’t remember when I joined WYO but spent at least five years hacking away at the back of the second violins, relying on the better players in front of me to cover my dubious intonation. Memory is an untrustworthy thing but in that time I think we performed Crown Imperial about 767 times, and Pictures at an Exhibition even more so. But don’t get me wrong; I love those works – Noel was always really savvy at picking music that we could rip into and let leash all the adolescent energy, ardour and fire that had built up by Friday night after a week’s tedious slog at school.
I left the orchestra in 1993 and now, as Marketing Manager of the Royal College of Music in London, my violin only ever comes out for the occasional staff/student fundraiser where once again greater talents conceal my embarrassingly bad tone. I’m also a regular commentator on BBC TV’s live Proms broadcasts and it’s fair to say that the passion you may catch me exuding there for some of the world’s best orchestras was born back in my days at WYO. Orchestral music was always just a pleasant wash of pretty sound until WYO gave me the chance to get inside it. My parents will recall my stupefied silence the weekend after my first WYO rehearsal; you simply can’t know what it’s like to be in an orchestra till you’ve tried it, and WYO gave so many of us that experience, and continues to do so. To this day, I can think of few life experiences better than being part of an orchestra, and playing our hearts out in concerts at Kendal Parish Church was the first time I really understood that. Even if you don’t play any more, it’s a feeling that continues to resonate within you. Experiences like that don’t go away.
I also have to confess that once Noel daringly assigned us to play something far out of our comfort zone – Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question – and I remember seething all the way through the performance, not having the faintest clue where we were amid its continuous high string chords. For years, I resented that piece. Then in 2001, I was watching Terrence Malick’s stunning war movie ‘The Thin Red Line’ and at its most devastating moment, a piece of music emerged that I remembered from the distant past. It was of course the Ives, and just last month I heard it again, used to equal effect in the National Theatre’s stunning production of ‘Women of Troy’. I didn’t remotely appreciate it at the time but I realise now that Noel was introducing us to one of the most extraordinary and brilliant works ever written, and I salute him now for doing so in the face of my frowns and confusion. The WYO really was a primer for life in more ways than we could ever know back then, and I’m really pleased to hear it’s still going strong.
James Murphy