MUSIC

Conservatory Project

For the past four years, the Kennedy Center's Conservatory Project has showcased top student musicians from 18 of America's best music schools. The round currently underway appears to show that classical music's future is in promising hands. On Tuesday and Thursday, two of this spring's eight concerts by students from the Juilliard School and the New England Conservatory of Music drew cheering capacity audiences, and deservedly so: Both were superlative.

The students in the Conservatory Project are the cream of the crop. Ranging from freshmen to doctoral candidates, most of them have already appeared in major venues around the world. Some are working on double degrees -- Washington's Mark Meadows, a pianist at the Peabody Institute scheduled to play in a concert on Friday, also majors in medicine at Johns Hopkins.

These students face a performance world much more competitive than it was even 20 years ago, and these performances represent important real-world experience. Joel Krosnick, cellist of the Juilliard String Quartet and a Juilliard faculty member who had students performing here this week, praised the project for "providing the visibility these students need to win over managers and keep their ensembles going."

The term "classical music" is broad in scope. In the University of Michigan's program on Monday, Pius Cheung played two of his own etudes on the marimba. But the standard repertory was abundantly represented as well -- more than once, in the case of Ravel's Piano Trio in A Minor. On Tuesday, a performance by Juilliard's N-E-W Trio (cellist and Krosnick student Gal Nyska, pianist Julio Elizalde and violinist Andrew Wan), communicated a warm subjectivity, intensity, and consciousness of Ravel's shifting colorscape . On Thursday, it was offered by the New England Conservatory's Moet Trio (violinist Yuri Namkung, cellist Yves Dharamraj, another Krosnick student, and pianist Michael Mizrahi), who sounded lustrous, but a bit more distant.

The N-E-W also gave a ravishing account, of Mendelssohn's C Minor trio, Op. 66 . On the New England program, baritone John Kapusta gave drama and clear diction to Poulenc's "Chansons Gaillardes," accompanied by the pianist Brett Hodgdon, a responsive partner; and Dima Murrath, a violist, joined pianist Vincent Planes in a fluid, sensitive account of Beethoven's Variations on a Mozart Theme, WoO 46.

-- Cecelia Porter

American Youth Philharmonic Orchestra

The four American Youth Philharmonic ensembles do not constitute a conservatory, but the most advanced of them, the American Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, offers conservatory-quality playing. At George Mason University's Center for the Arts on Sunday, every section stood out as Music Director Luis Haza conducted three 20th-century American works.

In William Schuman's "New England Triptych," the timpani in "Be Glad Then, America" and the opening snare drums in the expansive and gentle "When Jesus Wept" were impressive. The finale, "Chester," was all skirling woodwinds and scurrying strings.

Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" found the AYPO stronger as accompanist than guest pianist Burnett Thompson was as soloist. The orchestra was bright and brassy, with effectively snarky yelps and fine handling of complex rhythms; Thompson was more urbane, his phrasing a little fussy. He played as if he knows the piece well but is not charmed by it.