New World vision

Miami Beach seems an unlikely venue for a noble, idealistic artistic venture. Yet it is here that the New World Symphony has made its base for more than 20 years. It’s a sort of equivalent to our own National Youth Orchestra, with the same sense of joyous dedication wherein hard work becomes fun; but with the important difference that these young players are geared from the start towards the professional life of an orchestral musician. Rehearsals are strictly timed, there is a weekly stipend and players will all be seeking, and hopefully finding, positions in fully grown-up institutions all over the United States and the wider world, where many alumni are already placed. After years of work — and concerts in a converted cinema — their magnificent permanent home, custom-designed by Frank Gehry of Bilbao fame, is close to completion and will be inaugurated next year.

All this is the dreamchild of Michael Tilson Thomas. The dream has been realised through charm, charisma, patient persistence and sheer slog. He is still widely regarded over here as a bit of a playboy but for all the manifest brilliance of the heir to ‘Lenny’ Bernstein, in terms of glamour and flashy theatricality, this outstanding musician is, in fact, in his maturity, absolutely sober and dedicated across an extraordinarily wide range of repertoire to the highest standards. No one who witnessed the recent week that the NWS in Miami devoted to prolonged intricate rehearsal of a pair of Debussy orchestral masterpieces could doubt that MTT is the Real Right Thing. La mer, by now a warhorse for colourful display, and often coarsely, even carelessly interpreted, came alive, fresh-renewed by countless tiny details scrupulously moulded with a tireless pursuit of exactly the right nuance. While Jeux, the late masterpiece for dance that blooms best in the concert hall, responded yet more richly, in its infinite multicoloured subtlety, to comparable attentions.