The Hawaiʻi Youth Symphony and Hawaiʻi Symphony Orchestra will perform the finale for HSO’s Beethoven Festival this week. The free orchestra concert features students and professional musicians performing side-by-side and will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 12, at the Blaisdell Concert Hall.
For Michael Lim, who plays violin for Hawaiʻi Symphony Orchestra and is an alumnus of the Hawaiʻi Youth Symphony, it was this concert that helped solidify his career in music, he told Aloha State Daily.
“I was amazed at the sound of the orchestra when you added all of the professionals to our youth symphony group, which I already thought was fairly strong, but with the professionals on board I couldn't believe the kind of sound we could make together,” he said.
Today, Lim teaches middle school orchestra at his alma mater, Punahou School. On Saturdays, he also teaches two of the string orchestra ensembles for the Hawaiʻi Youth Symphony.
He still remembers the first time he participated in a side-by-side orchestra concert as a senior in high school. At the time, Lim shared a music stand with professional violinist Emma Votapek.
“I was just so impressed by the way she played and the way she engaged with the rest of ensemble and the sound she was making. It really inspired me to do better in orchestra,” said Lim, with a laugh. “Before that point, I've never sat next to a professional, and so I didn't really understand what it meant to play at that level. That short little experience that I had sitting next to her really shaped a lot of the way I treat orchestra to this very day. It was a really uplifting experience.”
Now, Lim is one of the professional musicians helping students, who get to share a music stand with him.
“I've done a couple of side-by-side experiences as a professional, and I hope that we can give the students that same experience that I felt as a high schooler,” he said.
On Wednesday, the HSO and HYS will perform excerpts of Dmitri Shostakovich’s landmark “Symphony No. 5 in D minor,” led by Maestro Dane Lam, and Michael-Thomas Foumai’s “Elysium: Fanfares on Themes from the Beethoven Symphonies,” under the direction of HYS Director of Orchestral Activities Maestro Joseph Stepec.
This is the final event of the Beethoven Festival, which includes the composer’s nine symphonies performed in a five-concert series, according to HSO’s website. The festival started with a performance of Symphony No. 1 and No. 3 on Thursday, Feb. 6, and Symphony No. 9 on Sunday, March 9.
Foumai’s “Elysium: Fanfares on Themes from the Beethoven Symphonies” is an eight-minute score commissioned by HYS, which brings together pieces from Beethoven’s fifth, sixth and seventh symphonies with elements of the famous “Ode to Joy” melody of his ninth symphony.
For Lim, music is a chance for expression.
“I am kind of an introverted person, but I feel emotions very deeply, it’s just hard for me to express a lot in words often,” he said. “I think music, especially violin, is a vehicle for me to really express something profound, something meaningful, something that I can't always say by talking. I also played piano for a long time, but violin, to me, is a little bit more expressive in the way that you can shape notes, and so I feel a little bit more connected to my expressive inner emotions through the violin.”
HYS works with more than 700 students between the ages of seven and 18 years old who are from more than 100 schools across the state. It features a symphony, jazz and academy string program, with each one having between three and four levels of instruction.
Each year, HSO reaches about 140,000 residents of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific through performances and education programs, according to representatives of HYS. The group offers about 50 performances each season, including the Halekulani Masterworks Series, HapaSymphony Series and the Sheraton Starlight Festival.
Read more about the HSO’s up-coming concerts here, including “Game On! A Mesmerizing Celebration of Symphonic Video Game Music,” on March 15 and 16, “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi in Concert” on March 28, 29 and 30. Buy tickets.
Katie Helland can be reached at katie@alohastatedaily.com.
