Saturday’s sunset in Caracas was accompanied by the sound of classical music as thousands of Venezuelan musicians performed Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Marche Slave to set a record for “the world’s largest orchestra.”
Flanked by mountains, the courtyard of the Venezuelan Military Academy hosted about 12,000 classical musicians looking to make their way into the Guinness World Records.
“If you break a string, don’t stop. If you lose the score, go on by heart, but don’t stop,” conductor Andres David Ascanio, 34, said before the performance.
Photo: AFP
The 12-minute piece was observed by about 260 auditors from accounting firm KPMG, charged with ensuring that each musician complied with the rules to set the new record, which include not sharing instruments and playing for at least five minutes during the score.
TEN-DAY WAIT
Guinness would announce in the next 10 days whether Venezuela has outflanked a 2019 Russian orchestra of 8,097 musicians as the world’s largest.
The performers were brought together by Venezuela’s publicly funded El Sistema program, which was founded in 1975 and has since provided classical music training to thousands of working-class children.
One of its most notable alumni is Gustavo Dudamel, music director of the Paris Opera and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Macaws flew overhead as the young musicians in white t-shirts followed Ascano’s instructions displayed on a large screen.
“It’s the first time in my life that I have experienced seeing the conductor on a screen, but ... we adapted quite well,” said 21-yearold violinist Ernesto Laguna, who traveled nearly 450km from the western city of Coro.
The percussion came in with booming cymbals during the dynamic central section of Tchaikovsky’s 1876 tone poem, which mixes Slavic, folkloric and Russian nationalistic elements.
When the score was finished, many of the musicians released their emotions by raising their instruments to the sky.
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