Last month I praised the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela’s CD of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Three more items have now come to hand from the same lineup, and they’re all of great, even overwhelming, interest.
The DVD entitled The Promise of Music consists of a film about this extraordinary orchestra at work at home in Caracas, culminating in their trip to Bonn, Germany to perform in the 2007 Bonn Beethoven Festival. There they play Beethoven’s Third Symphony (Eroica), and that complete performance then follows as a separate item, doubling the length of the DVD.
The most interesting thing you learn is that Venezuela’s ambitious music-education system involves teaching young children instruments as, from the very beginning, members of an orchestra. They are effectively taught en masse. Thus in one scene you hear a hall full of youthful instrumentalists blowing and scraping away to hideous effect. What on earth’s going on, you wonder. Eventually you realize that what they are trying to play is Land of Hope and Glory!
But the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra itself is a very different matter. This represents the cream of a quarter of a million students. And it really does make you wonder if the adage that the future of classical music itself lies, not in Europe or the US (where most of the young typically haven’t listened to this sort of music for almost half a century) is true. If Asia and South America really do represent the future of classical music, the only significant difference would appear to lie in the stronger female presence here (in Taiwan, anyway), whereas the Venezuelan team looks to be more weighted towards the male.
Insights are provided by extensive interview material with one of the orchestra’s drummers (and his brother), as well as with conductor Gustavo Dudamel and his family. It’s remarkable how God, country and family feature prominently in these young people’s minds and feelings — all three attitudes very characteristic of traditional societies, but all markedly on the wane in so-called “advanced” countries.
The Beethoven performance receives a rapturous reception in Germany. After the tension leading up to the concert — the principal flautist has to withdraw following an upset stomach — the outburst of joy from the Venezuelans is manifestly real. Of course it had been rehearsed, but when they don their national colors, and then virtually dance while playing a malamba by Alberto Ginastera, the happiness was clearly genuine, and not confined to the orchestra. The future, in some sense, (or so the optimists must have felt) was being born.
The following year, 2008, the Venezuelans appeared at the ultra-prestigious Salzgurg Festival. The video recording of this, by Agnes Meth, is even finer than that of the Eroica. The suavely handsome Venezuelans are highlighted against often very dark backgrounds, and the cutting between instrumentalists, closely following the music, is outstanding. They first play Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, with the two Capucon brothers, plus Martha Argerich, back at Salzburg after 14 years.
As if this wasn’t magnificent enough, they then play Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and no music could suit them better. Ravel orchestrated this piece in the early 20th century, using many unusual instruments and creating an electrifying sound-picture. For it the Venezuelan orchestra was expanded, with 14 double basses, and a brass section stretching as far as the eye can see. Novel sound sensations are what Dudamel often aims for, and frequently achieves, and this particular live performance seems to me the peak of the Simon Bolivar orchestra’s recording career so far.
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