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It’s rare to hear an orchestra’s first public performance. It’s even rarer when that performance takes place barely a week after the players first met. But that’s the seemingly impossible ask for the teenagers of the National Youth Orchestra, whose annual cycle begins in earnest just after Christmas, building up to a three-city UK tour before term. It’s a bracing start to the year for anyone whose post-festive achievements have been largely sofa-based.
Indeed, 2026’s Shimmer programme is less festive glow than urban heat-haze, inviting us into the sun-bleached Spanish streetscapes of Debussy and Ravel, wriggling with dances, festivals and life.
Premiered in 1910, the imagined Spain of Debussy’s Ibéria is a delicate, pointillist affair – a collage of muted colours and scents. Some works swell with the extra weight of NYO’s doubled – often tripled – forces, but while conductor Alexandre Bloch kept his huge ensemble absolutely controlled (this is, after all, Spain through unmistakably Gallic eyes) there was still a sense of painting extra layers on a watercolour. Rhythms juddered, the sinuous scale that stretches out an inviting hand in the first movement often smudged.
It was a similar story with Ravel’s Rapsodie Espagnole, which was at its best in the swirling rhythms and celebratory release of the final movement: caution finally flung to the wind, brass snarling and rasping, woodwind shooting skywards like fireworks.
Two contemporary works saw the ensemble come into their own. The Bernstein-brash, neon blare of Karim Al-Zand’s 2006 City Scenes introduced new swagger, a cheeky little phrase hopping around the orchestra like a sonic Artful Dodger, and strings and harps a gleaming foil to streetwise brass and woodwind. The contrast with Anna Clyne’s radiant, Rumi-inspired DANCE (2019) – a cello concerto in all but name – was thrilling. Accompanying Inbal Segev’s crooning, coaxing cello, the orchestra mirrored her shifting moods: now a courtly baroque group, now a klezmer or jazz band – leader Aki Blendis and principal cello Charlotte Shlomowitz each duetting stylishly with Segev.
Add in an opening group riff on Autumn Leaves (introducing the bassoon and tuba solos we never knew we needed) and a spirited encore of Rossini’s William Tell Overture (punchline: sung not played), and we had some sense of the breadth of what these teenagers have begun this week. By August, they’ll be flying.
The Shimmer tour continues on 5 January at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, and 6 January at the Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham.
