Concerto Night is always a highlight of the Music Academy of the West’s summer season, and Saturday night at the Lobero Theatre was no exception: uncommonly talented young artists and a refreshing program.

The conductor was young as well, Alexander Mickelthwaite, the maestro of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra during the regular season and a vigorous addition to the academy faculty. He guided the festival orchestra (also gloriously youthful) in supporting the soloists.

Sung Chan Chang, 21, led off with the allegro moderato movement from Antonin Dvorak’s beloved Cello Concerto in B Minor, Opus 104. A graduate student at Juilliard, Chang exhibited finesse far beyond his years in this, one of Dvorak’s most memorable works.

Next up was a genuine change of pace, the Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra by Gordon Jacob, with Vanessa Fraleck as soloist. Jacob was a British composer, and this work is modern and bluesy for such a “classical” piece. A 23-year-old Canadian, Fraleck also studies at Juilliard, working on a master’s degree with Joseph Alessi. She gave a delightful reading of this seldom-heard concerto.

The first half of the program concluded with the allegro maestoso of Fredric Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor, Opus 11, performed by Kenric Tam, 19, from Los Altos. This young man majors in biology at Harvard, studies piano with Wha Kyung Byun and Russell Sherman, and last year performed at the Kennedy Center after being named a Presidential Scholar. It seems almost superfluous to say that his playing was superb; one suspects that superb is about par for him.

The Concerto for Flute and Strings by Jacob was played by flutist Aaron Perdue, 22, who attended the academy in 2006 and 2007, as well as in the present season. Perdue recently finished his undergraduate studies at Carnegie Mellon Institute and will pursue a master’s degree at Rice University this fall with Leone Buyse. He played with great spirit and flair — another candidate for a brilliant future.

The evening concluded with the final two movements from the Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Opus 77/99 of Dmitri Shostakovich, in a bravura reading by Yun-Ting Lee, 24.

Concerto Night is when the cream of the academy’s crop turns out, and the Taipei-born Lee certainly qualifies. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and has won numerous prizes.

The Shostakovich was written in 1947-48 and earned the distinction of promptly being banned by Josef Stalin in Soviet Russia. The old boy must have recognized that Shostakovich by that time in his career was determined to do things his way. The concerto was not premiered until 1955 (two years after Stalin’s death), when it was introduced by David Oistrakh, to whom it was dedicated, and the Leningrad Philharmonic. Lee proved entirely worthy of these heroic antecedents, and the audience stomped, shouted and gave him a standing ovation at the end.

The ovation continued while Mickelthwaite called all the concerto artists out for a final bow. Trombonist Fralick apparently had left the Lobero by then, but all the other young musicians smiled broadly as they accepted their well-deserved applause.

— Margo Kline covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributor.