Fashions influence classical music as they do other kinds, and over the last year the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela has been a name on many enthusiasts’ lips. It’s the product of a program to educate young people, often from severely disadvantaged backgrounds, in classical music performance. A quarter of a million Venezuelan children have benefited from the scheme, known locally as the sistema, and this astonishing orchestra is one result.
Its conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, now 28, became its music director at the age of 17, and was subsequently appointed, not without controversy, by the Los Angeles Philharmonic as its director from 2009. And Deutsche Grammophon (DGM) has issued, among other items, highly praised recordings of Beethoven’s 5th and 7th Symphonies, and of Mahler’s 5th Symphony, with the Venezuelan under-25-year-olds under Dudamel’s baton.
I found their Mahler 5th riveting. They have the characteristic virtues of youth — enthusiasm, lack of embarrassment at delivering passionate and overtly “beautiful” renderings, but also a commitment in doing something — recording for an international label — for the first time. These qualities stand against the suave assurance and “professionalism” of the great established orchestras (the Vienna Philharmonic, for example, is said to be made up largely of professors of music).
If I preferred the Venezuelan Mahler to most existing versions, it’s partly because I’m not a natural Mahler-lover. I tend to prefer the confident mastery of Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, Bellini or Verdi to the contortions of early 20th century anguish. But in a sense these young Venezuelans converted me, and I have listened to this remarkable CD over and over again.
Some critics have questioned the acoustic quality of this recording, made in the Great Hall of the City University of Caracas. But I found it especially fine. There’s a very distinct rendering of instrumental tone (presumably the result of placing microphones close to the main instrumental groupings), and this combines with the dedicated abandon of the playing itself to marvelous effect. And the German names of the recording engineers show that DGM sent its own specialists to South America rather than relying on local technical talent.
The celebrated Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini paid the young Venezuelans the tribute of recording Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with them on his three-disc CD set of all Beethoven’s piano concertos (DGM 477 7244, released July 2008). DGM has made this artist central to its current catalog, and his new CD of Chopin is masterly indeed.
It contains the four mazurkas of Opus 33, the three waltzes of Opus 34, the ballade No. 2, the impromptu No. 2, and the famously problematic second sonata. Pollini has observed that Chopin was a composer who only wrote masterpieces, and who never wrote anything for purely lyrical effect. And the intellectual quality of his playing, not to mention the choice of items, is a major characteristic. Pollini is ascetic and muscular, and for many listeners this will bring out an unsuspected side of the great Polish composer.
There seems no end to the pleasure delivered by Taiwan’s Evergreen Symphony Orchestra. Though they have issued many DVDs of their concerts, there are also some CDs, and one I’ve listened to recently is of a concert devoted to Dvorak given in Taipei on Oct. 19, 2006.
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