Gustavo Dudamel welcomed back by Venezuela

Gustavo Dudamel has returned to conduct in his home country of Venezuela, leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra in a series of Mahler symphonies.

Dudamel has been Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 2009, and the Philharmonic, recently received a 2012 Grammy Award for ‘Best Orchestral Performance’ for their rendition of Brahms: Symphony No. 4.

The world famous Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra has been described as “the crown jewel of the nation’s musical education program.” ‘El Sistema,’ Venezuela’s system dedicated to improving the education and livelihood of hundreds of thousands of children through music, has projected its star, Dudamel, into tremendous fame.

In the 4am queues to buy $8 tickets for the Philharmonic’s Mahler concerts, Ethan Bearman, a French horn musician with the Philharmonic, related an exchange he heard in which a man enquired “is this the line for the Mahler tickets?” Only to be corrected: “No, this is the line for Gustavo,” reported the New York Times.

And so the LA Philharmonic’s guest visit, the first by a major American orchestra in twenty years, has revealed the extent not only of Dudamel’s fame, but the inspiration it poses to the musical students of Venezuela’s ‘El Sistema’ and the boost provided to the cultural industry.

“The fact that this amazing orchestra is coming here to give to our children and to our youth and to our people their music, their energy, is a dream come true for me,” Dudamel told the New York Times. “How amazing is it to have one of the best orchestras here with us, not only as a guest orchestra, because at the end we have become one family.”

The LA Philharmonic has since adopted ‘El Sistema’ training methods, offering support to youth orchestras throughout Los Angeles by educational models directly scoped from Venezuela’s own system. Such an imitation can only be a form of utmost flattery and reveals the exported reputation of ‘El Sistema’ as a “force in the world of classical music.”

These training models and initiatives aim to break through obstacles such as poverty with skills acquired by intense musical education. The system has inspired a similar musical education project in the UK. The Stirling housing estate of Raploch will be the setting for the new project. It is an area “best-known for its drug problems, educational underachievement and violent crime.”

But as part of the London 2012 festival, Stirling Castle in Raploch will play host to the outdoor guest performance of Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra in ‘The Big Concert.’ This follows Dudamel’s past trip to the UK in 2011 during which he conducted the Symphony Orchestra in a critically acclaimed performance at the BBC Proms, which was heralded as “sensational” by critics.