Various Composers - Fiesta (Gustavo Dudamel)

Information

• (01) Silvestre Revueltas - Sensemayá
• (02) Inocente Carreño - Margariteña, symphonic variations
• (03) Antonio Estévez - Mediodía en el Llano
• (04) Arturo Márquez - Danzón No. 2
• (05) Aldemaro Romero - Fuga con Pajarillo (from Suite for Strings No. 1)
• (06) Alberto Ginastera - Dances from the Ballet 'Estancia', Op. 8
• (10) Evencio Castellanos - Santa Cruz de Pacairigua, symphonic suite
• (11) Leonard Bernstein - Mambo (from 'West Side Story')

Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela
Gustavo Dudamel, conductor

Date: 2008
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/cat/4777457

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Review

Dudamel’s wonder band whip up a Latin storm, and even out-Lenny Lenny

Being the sort of chap who nibbles the toffee off a Twix before the biscuit, I immediately flicked to the “Mambo” section from Bernstein’s West Side Story. I couldn’t believe what I heard – the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra’s percussion section strike up the band with the swing, push and individuality of a dozen great jazz drummers and the brass section riff like they’re plugged into the Venezuelan national grid. The visceral impetus with which Dudamel plants firecrackers under his orchestra outplays anybody else – out-Lennying Lenny even – who has approached the piece. It’s that good, completely unheralded in fact.

As music writers, we often twist ourselves into a pretzel trying to define what makes one interpretation superior to the next, but there’s something about this performance that just is. These young musicians haven’t needed to find a Latin American feel by learning notation. It already flows through their DNA and takes them beyond the notes, direct into the marrow of the music itself. And even when a piece is amiable rather than spectacular – Evencio Castellanos’s Santa Cruz de Pacairigua being a case in point – their rhythmic nous and heightened melodic expressivity override the longueurs.

Content-wise the most robust pieces are Revueltas’s Sensemayá and the dances from Ginastera’s ballet Estancia. Revueltas’s work, an evocation of an ancient Mexican chant used to kill snakes, already enjoys a cult status that Dudamel’s understanding of its bold orchestral colourings and ritualistic power can only enhance. The Ginastera climaxes with the asymmetrical rhythmic trapdoors of “Malambo”, brass and percussion again to the fore, although the delicate oom-pahs and opulent string swells of the “Wheat Dance” offer a rare moment of tranquillity. The warm horn and subtone string introduction to Antonio Estévez’s Mediodía en el Llano also shows they can “do” delicate, but inevitably it’s the infectious hardcore Latin spirit that, once sampled, stays embedded in your imagination.

-- Philip Clark, Gramophone

More reviews:
MusicWeb International  RECORDING OF THE MONTH
https://www.allmusic.com/album/fiesta-mw0001404492
https://www.amazon.com/Fiesta-Gustavo-Dudamel/dp/B0013USZHG

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Gustavo Dudamel (born 26 January 1981 in Barquisimeto, Venezuela) is a Venezuelan conductor and violinist. Dudamel studied music from an early age, attending the Jacinto Lara Conservatory and the Latin-American Violin Academy. He began to study conducting in 1995, and worked as assistant for Simon Rattle in Berlin and Salzburg in 2003. Dudamel was Principal Conductor of the Gothenburg SO (2007-12). He is currently music director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar (since 1999) and the Los Angeles Philharmonic (since 2009). Gramophone named Dudamel its 2011 Artist of the Year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustavo_Dudamel
https://www.gustavodudamel.com/

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