The Berlin Music Festival gets off yet again to “a brilliant start” (Tagesspiegel).: Daniel Barenboim plays both of the Brahms piano concertos at the Philharmonie with Gustavo Dudamel and the Staatskapelle accompanying him. Dudamel and Barenboim had already appeared on stage together at La Scala in Milan to celebrate Daniel Barenboim’s 70th birthday. That winning collaboration now continues in Berlin with a programme that is particularly demanding for the pianist: “Barenboim launches with near-superhuman enthusiasm into Brahms’s two piano concertos (…), masterpieces of monumental dimensions. (…)” is how the Berliner Morgenpost describes it, while the Tagesspiegel newspaper is impressed by the pianist’s accomplishment in mastering the works’ complexity: “This artist is a phenomenon: he appears to enjoy limitless energy, concentration and love of music-making. (…) In the D minor concerto Barenboim focuses entirely on the intimate moments, eschewing a display of strength which this piece sometimes
seems to encourage.”
The concert given by the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela under its conductor Gustavo Dudamel at the Beethovenfest 2007 in Bonn was a highlight of the musical year. Over 200 young musicians between the ages of 10 and 24, many from underprivileged backgrounds, performed with nearly untamable energy under the baton of a young maestro destined to conduct the most fabled orchestras in the world. The concert program (2 x 45’) includes Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances, and pieces by Latin American composers Revueltas, Márquez and Ginastera. In the riveting 90-minute documentary ‘The Promise of Music’ (Prog. No. A05016554) directed by Enrique Sánchez Lansch (award-winning ‘Rhythm Is It’), we follow Dudamel as he prepares his orchestra in Caracas for its concert in Bonn, and we accompany the young musicians on their trip to Europe.
In 1944, at the age of just 25, Leonard Bernstein conducted the first performance of his First Symphony, a work based on the Old Testament lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah and which demonstrates astonishing musical and intellectual maturity. PROGRAM Bernstein: Symphony No. 1 “Jeremiah”
The Promise of Music is a full-length feature film about the story of Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. The film documents Dudamel preparing his orchestra in Caracas for their upcoming concert at the Beethovenfest in Bonn, 2007. Following different young musicians in their day-to-day lives, the film shows how classical music has the capability of changing both the individual and their environment. A unique and deeply moving look behind the scenes of one of the most talked about phenomena in the musical world of today!
The promise of a Strauss double-bill with the Wiener Philharmoniker would be enough to have most concertgoers swooning – add in audience favourite Asmik Grigorian and Maestro Gustavo Dudamel, and the Salzburg audience could not be more ecstatic. Grigorian interpreted Strauss’ Vier letzte Lieder with “penetrating intensity” (VN), capturing the fleeting emotions of each song: “She effortlessly savours Strauss’s soaring flights of fancy and lavishes herself on his wide-ranging cantilenas” (BR Klassik). After this moving performance, Dudamel and the orchestra take the audience on a musical hike with Strauss’ tone poem Eine Alpensinfonie. “Gustavo Dudamel’s interpretation…is so vividly real. The orchestra once again delivers a brilliant performance of expressive, joyfully committed playing” (Opera Online).
“Evgeny Kissin is one of the best technicians on the keys” Süddeutsche Zeitung. PROGRAM Liszt: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 1; Stravinsky: L’Oiseau de feu (The Firebird)
Richard Strauss year 2014 at Salzburg Festival: Gustavo Dudamel, winner of the Leonard Bernstein Award 2014, conducts the Vienna Philharmonic. On the program Strauss’ tone poems “Tod & Verklärung” and “Also sprach Zarathustra”. The evening is rounded up with a work by René Staar, who is also one of the Philharmonic’s violinists.
Under the heading “Party in the Felsenreitschule,” the Munich daily Münchner Merkur boldly proclaimed: “Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra guests at the Salzburg Festival – and delivers the biggest audience hit of the summer.” Two days after the concert reviewed by the Merkur, the ensemble united its massive forces once again for a spectacular concert in the Grosses Festspielhaus – another unqualified success! Rarely has an orchestra reached out and grabbed its audience in such a visceral manner; and even more rarely has such a feat been accomplished by an orchestra of youngsters between the ages of 12 and 26! The Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, the Salzburg Festival’s resident orchestra of 2008, is a product of the “Sistema de Orquestas” set up to allow children of all social levels to learn a musical instrument and play in an ensemble. Today, 250,000 youths are learning from 15,000 instructors and playing in over 120 youth orchestras and nearly 60 children’s orchestras. Some of the Sistema’s finest players were picked to form the S.B.Y.O. and to work in Salzburg with such outstanding musicians as Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Martha Argerich. Documenting their activity there is the program “School for the Ear” featuring works by Beethoven and Mahler (also available from UNITEL CLASSICA). Conducting the present concert is the Sistema’s most celebrated alumnus, Gustavo Dudamel, born in 1981. The young maestro, who was appointed chief conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 2007, is, in the words of the Salzburg Festival’s music director, Markus Hinterhäuser, “the most charismatic conductor since Leonard Bernstein.” The concert opens with Beethoven’s sparkling Triple Concerto. The distinguished soloists are Martha Argerich (piano), Renaud Capuçon (violin) and Gautier Capuçon (cello). Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s monumental Pictures at an Exhibition forms the second part of the concert, in which “Dudamel channels his juvenile forces into a compelling flow with dynamic gestures” (Der Standard). The young conductor proved that “he has an extraordinary talent not only to stimulate his players, but also to accompany creatively and imaginatively” (Die Presse).
Under the heading “Party in the Felsenreitschule,” the Munich daily Münchner Merkur boldly proclaimed: “Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra guests at the Salzburg Festival – and delivers the biggest audience hit of the summer.” Two days after the concert reviewed by the Merkur, the ensemble united its massive forces once again for a spectacular concert in the Grosses Festspielhaus – another unqualified success! Rarely has an orchestra reached out and grabbed its audience in such a visceral manner; and even more rarely has such a feat been accomplished by an orchestra of youngsters between the ages of 12 and 26! The Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, the Salzburg Festival’s resident orchestra of 2008, is a product of the “Sistema de Orquestas” set up to allow children of all social levels to learn a musical instrument and play in an ensemble.
The “Mahler Cycle” of Salzburg Festival 2013 is opened by Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 in E flat conducted by Gustavo Dudamel who leads “his” Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra & Choir of Venezuela, joined by a cast of internationally acclaimed soloists. The concert is also part of the visionary and exemplary project EL Sistema (The Miracle), based on the visionary idea of giving children a better future through classical music by building a network of children orchestras and music centres.
