Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, Royal Festival Hall

Gustavo Dudamel and his orchestra, the Simón Bolívar Orchestra, are a phenomenon. When they made their UK debut in 2007 at the Proms, the audience and critics had never seen anything like it. Here were two-hundred young musicians, aged between 16 and 24, many of whom had apparently come from the slums of Venezuela, playing serious classical music with extraordinary energy, exuberance and brio. And then, to everyone’s amazement, during their encores, they started swaying, singing and dancing to the music, spinning their instruments around. They brought the house down, and have had sell-out concerts ever since.

The orchestra was born out of the now world-famous Venezuelan music education system, known as El Sistema, founded in 1975 by the economist and musician, José Abreu, who believed that giving children in the most deprived communities a musical instrument and getting them to play in an orchestra, can affect social change. Many of these musicians grew up in abject poverty: the discipline of learning and playing classical music with others has paved their way out.

The conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, also learnt the violin through El Sistema, joined the SBYO at 13, and was appointed music director in 1999, at the precocious age of 18. The success of the orchestra worldwide is as much the result of his energy, charisma and vision. Since 2009, Dudamel has also been Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

The first of their two concerts at the Royal Festival Hall is an all German programme - the immortal Beethoven’s 5th symphony, followed by five excerpts from Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle, including the Ride of the Valkyries - grandiose works that should play to the strengths of this huge, dynamic orchestra. The second concert features Mahler’s 5th Symphony and the less well-known ‘Tres versiones sinfónicas’, by the Spanish-born composer, Julián Orbón, which had its world premiere in Caracas in 1954. It draws heavily on 16th century Spanish music, as well as the percussive rhythms of Cuba and Congo. In the hands of Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony, this promises to be a show-stopper.  

The programme will be performed twice, on 8 and 9 July at 19:30.