Dudamel.jpg La Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar rehearsing with their chief conductor

Last week we had a rare guest in the Finlandia Hall - "La Fundación del Estado para el Sistema Nacional de las Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela" had decided to make an invasion to my home country and it brought here their flagship Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra together with the founder of FESNOJIV José Antonio Abreu and the up-and-coming Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel.

The two concerts of the orchestra had been sold out a long time ago, so I was very happy that the orchestra invited all music students and music educators in Helsinki area to their open dress rehearsal (I was a little surprised to see so few conducting students in the hall, though). The rehearsal was followed by a lecture by Dr. Abreu, which I also went to hear. It seemed to me that there is no special methodology in the Venezuelan music education system - it is basically a social project where quantity matters more than quality.

Young and HAPPY orchestra players from Venezuela...

What about the orchestra, then? Well, there was both quality and quantity! The orchestra was simply huge and everyone seemed to play their hearts out. The repertoire was hard: Mussorgsky's Pictures in an Exhibition and Salonen's LA Variations, but the youngsters pulled them off convincingly. Just the roughness of the string playing betrayed the fact that this is a youth orchestra where players come and go and cannot really develop a cultured sound.

The main point nevertheless was, that the players were happy and enthusiastic and without a trace of routine! Let's hope these young players and their likes will slowly by slowly start infiltrating the European and North American orchestras and inject them with fresh latin spirit!