BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Whether you’re a composer, performer, arts administrator, or even music journalist, it’s likely you’ve had an enriching experience with the Australian Youth Orchestra. Perhaps like me (and much of our team here at CutCommon), you took part in a National Music Camp, meeting new friends and sharing your deep passion for classical music. Perhaps you’ve attended an AYO concert as a listener, and felt moved by the power of Australia’s next generation of orchestral performance.
Or perhaps, like cellist Noah Lawrence, you’re finding joy in the opportunity to return to live music after these hard pandemic years. And if you’re in this category, you’ll probably agree with Noah that there’s just nothing else like “the wonderful collective spirit that is inherent in an orchestra”.
This July, AYO makes its return to the stage through its Winter Season in Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney. Noah is one of the players on this program, which is conducted by Sir Mark Elder CH CBE, and features Berlioz’s Les francs-juges and Strauss’ An Alpine Symphony.
Noah — who in 2021 graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School, and now trains at the Australian National Academy of Music — tells us what this Winter Season means to him.
Noah! Let’s start at the beginning. Why did you want to get involved in AYO for its Winter Season?
Hi there! Thanks for having me on CutCommon! I’ve been playing cello on AYO programs for a number of years now, and I have loved absolutely every minute of it! It has long been a dream of mine to take part in the flagship Seasons program — and after two years of cancelled plans, I’m beyond excited to finally take to the stage with this fantastic orchestra.
So how have you been preparing for this winter season event?
First and foremost, by getting super excited about the whole thing! I feel it’s very important to start from a positive place when diving into repertoire like this — it makes the entire process a lot more rewarding for me.
My ideal preparation would look something like this: I would start by listening to different recordings in order to try to understand if there are standard practices in place for how the piece is performed. This, combined with a little background research, can really start to give me a feel for what the piece communicates on a broad scale.
Then, I like to move into ‘play-alongs’: I’ll put on a recording with my headphones, and play my part! These are, of course, far from perfect, but they help me to understand the general directions and effects of the music.
It might seem unusual, but often the last part of my preparation is the real ‘dirty work’ — going back over the music and spot-checking tricky passages, really getting every note under my fingers.
As you can see, I’m quite reliant on recordings in my preparation, simply because it often feels as though the dots on the page are very abstract. There is so much emotional intent, rhetoric, and gesture that is invisible — or rather, can’t be seen as easily on the page.
My end-goal is always to have the sheet music acting only as a prompt for the subtler ideas that we will work towards when we’re together as an orchestra.
When you do come together as an orchestra, you’ll be working through a huge program — Berlioz and Strauss. What are some of the areas you really like to focus on when working through music like this?
It is pretty massive! This program for me really illustrates something that is becoming a very important part of my musical training: knowing what to do when presented with pages and pages of dense, complicated writing — I’m looking at you, Strauss — and a very limited timeframe in which to learn it.
That’s why I’m so grateful to have been taught a bunch of tools that I can use to tackle something like this! One of my favourites is ‘chunking’ — a bit of a classic method when it comes to this sort of repertoire. It involves isolating very small sections of music — often only a single bar, perhaps even shorter — and working to nail that small section. Eventually, you can start to chain these together until, hopefully, entire pages of music feel like one smooth, totally ingrained gesture.
You’ll be working with Sir Mark Elder for this performance. What do you hope to get out of learning with him?
It will really be a privilege to work with somebody who has such a wide range of experience; I can only imagine what he must have learnt from working with so many of the great orchestras all over Europe and America.
At the same time, I will be really interested to hear his insights into what it means to have such a long-term relationship with a single ensemble, in this case the Hallé orchestra in Manchester [which he has directed since 2000]. I’m looking forward to learning about the similarities and differences between these two parts of his career.
Perhaps most of all though, I can’t wait to experience what I don’t yet know about him: Sir Mark’s individual approach to music making. Every conductor I have worked with has had a distinct and personal approach to the craft of music, and a lot of these have really profoundly influenced the way I view music-making.
AYO is returning to the stage after three pandemic years. What does it mean to have such a big gap in live music so early in your career — and how are you feeling about playing live?
For me, making music more or less alone for the past two years has been a huge challenge, but one that I’ve been able to learn some important lessons from.
One thing I feel I understand far better now is that there really is no substitute for playing music in the presence of others. Whether they’re fellow performers or audience members, that conversation is essential to me.
Recently, my incredible teacher Howard Penny introduced to me the concept of the gegenüber — or, as I like to think of it, the ‘musician’s opposite’. This is the person listening to your musical story, the one we have to convince with our playing! And while it is possible to invent this character, even alone in your own bedroom, I find it so much more natural to respond to a flesh-and-blood person sitting next to me. So I think as we all return to live performance, it will be really interesting to see how this narrative mindset has been affected by such isolation.
In short, I just can’t wait to get back on stage with so many of my friends and tell another story. And I couldn’t think of something more evocative than this Alpine journey we’re going to embark on!
So what has been the most enjoyable part of AYO this year?
One thing that I will never forget about being a part of the AYO — and I was reminded of it with such force at National Music Camp this year — is simply looking around in orchestra and knowing that we are all working toward a common goal.
To be surrounded by close friends who I hope to work with for many years to come, and to have that sense of cooperation and common purpose, triggers the most overwhelming sense of motivation and positivity for the future in me.
How do you hope you will feel at the end of this concert?
I’m hoping to feel a mix of things: a sense of satisfaction; of knowing I put all my effort into our joint musical creation. But I also want to find again a feeling that I tend to catch after AYO events — an intense optimism for the future, a really strong desire to make the world a better place.
It sounds exaggerated, but it really is that profound for me. I think it’s that orchestras, and especially this youth orchestra, remind me in a small way of the level of empathy and unity that it is actually possible to achieve on a broader societal scale. This is something I truly value given the ongoing tragedies in the world.
In a broader sense, what do you feel AYO does to support its musicians through the transition between learning music in school or university, and performing to an industry level?
AYO has supported me through so many different forms of exposure — not only to like-minded young people and to established industry professionals, but also to what it means to be a musician in the industry: the dedication and passion that our tutors and my peers represent; the resilience, commitment and selflessness that is required to make a great piece of art function.
Whether it’s through their seminars with industry leaders on topics ranging from music business to a musician’s health, or something subtler like the busy-yet-thoughtful way each day on an AYO program is planned out, this organisation really feels like a taster for the classical music industry.
Any parting words before you get ready to perform?
I don’t think anybody these days needs to be told to enjoy the moment. The fragility of our situation has been clearly on show these past few years. What I’m going to do, and what I’d encourage others to do, is to be mindful of how lucky we are to be working in this particularly transient artform, and hopefully to use our work to spread the positivity, and all the wonderful collective spirit that is inherent in an orchestra, as far and wide as we can.
Thanks for the chat — now I’d better go practice!
Watch Noah Lawrence perform alongside Australian Youth Orchestra musicians in the Winter Season this 10 July in Hamer Hall, 12 July in Queensland Performing Arts Centre, and 14 July in Sydney Town Hall.
Images supplied.
