‘Young Talents’ Take Center Stage for Final Concert in Orchestra Series

The 2017-18 Pacific Northwest Concert Orchestra Concert Series may be at its end, but the final performance of the season will showcase the future.

The PNCO will feature 15-year-old Samuel Miller, of Onalaska and 16-year-old W.F. West High School sophomore Jisu Han as soloists during its show at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Centralia College. Admission to Corbet Theater inside Washington hall is free to the public.

Miller, who is homeschooled, will perform the first movement of Dmitri Kabalevsky’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D major, while Han is set to play Fantasia Appassionata by Henri Vieuxtemps.

“They brought their solos to me when they auditioned earlier this year,” conductor Joshua Friedlander said. “They’re very contrasting works, one from the 1800s and another from the time of Stalin.”

Friedlander kept the youth movement going while filling out the rest of the program. The orchestra will play Symphony No. 3 by Franz Schubert and Symphony No. 29 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart before concluding the show with Bolero by Maurice Ravel.

Schubert and Mozart each wrote their pieces at the age of 18. The PNCO titled Monday’s show “Young Talents” to illustrate the overarching theme of the evening.

Friedlander bore witness to the talents of Han and Miller during an audition period earlier this year. He chose the duo in part based on how their performances belied their ages.

“Technical proficiency is something I look at, but I also wanted to see how they handled the spotlight and how good they are with their work,” Friedlander said. “I wanted to see if they felt comfortable with the compositions they were playing.”

Monday will be Miller’s first time performing as a soloist with an orchestra backing him. He said he was drawn to Kabalevsky’s piece because it a brighter and lighter-hearted piece compared to some other concertos.

It took him about three months to learn the music from start to finish.

“I think it’s going to be awesome to play on a big stage, on a big piano, in front of a lot of people,” Miller said.

Han is no stranger to the spotlight of a soloist. She performed with the PNCO during a concert in 2015 and has played Fantasia Appassionata in state and regional contests this year.

She sometimes mimics playing with an orchestra by finding a recording of the piece on Youtube and playing along.

“It was new for me when I played with the PNCO a few years ago, because I’d never performed with an orchestra before,” Han said. “It was really cool to not just be accompanied by a pianist and it’s still one of my favorite performances that I’ve done.”

With the next PNCO concert not likely to take place until December, Friedlander is looking forward to showcasing as many musicians as possible on Monday.

Bolero, a piece most famously known for its repetitive snare drum rhythm, offers the opportunity for him to distribute a number of solo opportunities.

“I thought it would be a good ending to show off the orchestra,” Friedlander said. “They’ve been a great group to work with and have always come up to the occasion.”