American Youth Philharmonic's Black History Month Celebration

Pianist Raymond Jackson added verve to the AYP's performance of "Rhapsody in Blue." (American Youth Philharmonic)

The best student orchestras bring something special to the music they play, as the American Youth Philharmonic and its music director, Luis Haza, reminded us Sunday afternoon in the Kennedy Center's Concert Hall. The AYP's area high schoolers play remarkably well under Haza, with only less than optimal unanimity in the strings and occasional awkward blending of woodwind timbres betraying their amateur status. But beyond that, they play with energy, fire and even abandon that one rarely hears from professional bodies, and those traits served them well in Sunday's program.

After an odd prelude -- AYP harpists Grace Browning and Sara Franke playing 20 minutes of winsome, super-lightweight music -- the orchestra presented two compositions by African Americans in honor of Black History Month. One was a world premiere: Peabody student Joseph Jones's short "Fanfare" for wind, brass and percussion in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. It celebrated the great leader's "powerful oratory and quiet strength" with solid, noble brass chords and joyful woodwind effusions. It made a more vivid impression than William Grant Still's Afro-American Symphony, which proves that dressing blues themes in cushy orchestral strings deadens their emotional impact. Nevertheless, the finale, "Aspiration," generates a somber drive all Still's own that became quite powerful in this performance.

Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait" sputtered a bit when narrator Maureen Bunyan seemed to be deciding on stage how to navigate Lincoln's cadences, but the AYP played Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and Sibelius's "Finlandia" with white-hot fervor. The former also featured a magnetic performance by pianist Raymond Jackson, who perfectly balanced Gershwin's jazzy spontaneity and classical grandeur.

-- Andrew Lindemann Malone