By Sebastian Spreng, Visual Artist and Classical Music Writer

The sight of a Miami concert hall overflowing with enthusiastic young people is invigorating. It is a welcome rarity that should stop being rare as soon as possible. And because these days attracting new devotees to classical music is close to a feat, every means is justified, not matter how ingenious.

In this case, the means work just fine: two half-hour concerts for a purely symbolic price of $2.50. It costs more to get to the venue. You get two different programs and – quite an innovation – a yoga class before or between the concerts at SoundScape, the park next to the New World Center. Of course, the yoga is optional. It is just an excuse, a bonus for the young masses; those NWS wants to see joining the habitués. And they did, packing the NWS campus last Thursday and Friday.

You might have expected the program to show certain condescension toward the young, but it didn’t, and there’s a lesson there too. Neither boleros nor capriccios nor waltzes nor divertissements were on the menu, but, rather, well known pieces not frequently performed in these latitudes, by two greats, one from each side of the Atlantic: Leonard Bernstein and Richard Strauss. The concert, it is worth nothing, was Miami’s sole tribute to the German composer on his 150^th birthday celebrated around the world.

In keeping with the evening’s premise, the players were impertinently young: members of the America’s Orchestral Academy, and two rising stars, conductor Christian Reif and soprano Julia Bullock

Accordingly, the mini-video that precedes every NWS concert addressed the relationship between breathing and music, and yoga’s effects on the artist’s ego. A nutritious appetizer that defined the evening’s main two interactions: on one hand, the serenity of the meditative discipline and, on the other, the boundless energy of the music on the program. The result was more than inspiring.

At both mini-concerts, the orchestra displayed noteworthy precision and polish, responding optimally to NWS Conducting Fellow Christian Reif. The 25-year old Bavarian conductor, winner of the 2015 German Operetta Prize for Young Conductors, was like a fish in water, not only in Strauss’ Don Juan, but also the Bernstein selection that featured Julia Bullock as soloist.

The singer, winner of the Naumburg Competition, is a talent to watch, especially after her superb performance in the West Side Story Michael Tilson Thomas with the San Francisco Symphony, available on CD. The brave Bullock was singing under the weather, and if in Songfest’s Julia de Burgos her voice came across as somewhat cold, she soared in Somewhere, thrilling the audience. A professional through and through, she made optimal use of Reif’s meticulous accompaniment. Earlier, he shone in Fancy Free’s dizzying Gallop, with the right touch of Kurt Weill that the conductor brilliantly highlighted. The three dances from On the Town showcased the brilliance of “Lenny” at this best. In Lonely Town, the pas de deux was appropriately seductive, and Times Square 1944 a vertiginous swirl.

The second mini-concert was devoted to the tone poem that made the 24-year-old Strauss a new star in Weimar more than a century ago. Don Juan is close to a portrait of the daring Munich native, who again showed his mettle in Don Quixote and A Hero’s Life, that Strauss of exquisite intimacy, of torrid romance and sarcastic commentary, of affirmation of life and duels with death. Reif’s reflected Strauss’ fervent and exact dynamic, tonal opulence and broad color palette. The four horns of the famous leitmotif, as well as the oboe, illustrated Strauss at the height of his powers. They were joined by the strings’ iridescent sound in a rendition that expressed with proper eloquence the evening’s youthful energy.

In short, brevity was the soul of this Yoga Night that turned out to be the best (musical) deal in town, deserving an ovation or, even better, a heartfelt, silent Namaste. www.nws.edu/YOGA