Symon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra

Symon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra ( Spanish: Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar ) - Venezuelan Symphony Orchestra . Like much in Venezuela, it is named after Simon Bolivar .

Created in 1978 by José Antonio Abreu during the organization of the Venezuelan music education system ( El Sistema ), which currently includes about 200 youth and youth orchestras throughout Venezuela, as the lead national youth orchestra ( Spanish: Sinfónica de la Juventud Venezolana Simón Bolívar ) During the initial period of the orchestra's work, Abreu directed it himself, widely inviting various conductors to collaborate; then in 1991 - 1998 , the prominent Venezuelan conductor Alfredo Roucheles shared the artistic leadership of the collective with Abreu.

The heyday of the orchestra was associated with the appointment of 18-year-old Gustavo Dudamel as its musical director: in 2000, the orchestra with Dudamel led a successful tour in Germany, then toured the United States, and in 2007 performed brilliantly as part of the famous the London BBC-Proms concert cycle, performing Shostakovich ’s Tenth Symphony , Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story and Latin American composers. As the reviewer noted, at the end of the concert “the audience welcomed the musicians with the fervor usually reserved for rock festivals” - and this is not surprising, since “the most striking feature of this concert was the unbridled joy radiated not only by Dudamel, but by every musician; there was a feeling that there was a festive party on the stage, and the audience was just fortunate enough to happen to be at it ” ^[1] . Describing the Venezuelan music education system as the best example for the UK, Julian Lloyd Webber later wrote about this concert:

A year ago, in August, <...> The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra came from Venezuela to give concerts at the Edinburgh Festival and at the London Proms, which were, quite simply, a miracle. In an instant, they shattered the myth that classical music is addressed to the elite and belongs to the white middle class. <...> Here, on our doorstep, the children of the workers' quarters (and these quarters are more victorious than ours) played Shostakovich like we had never heard before. Suddenly, as far as possible from all elitism, the game in the orchestra began to look attractive to sexuality, and the idea of ​​music as a possible catalyst for social changes got a chance to take root ^[2] .

Under the direction of Dudamel, the orchestra recorded Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and Beethoven ’s Fifth and Seventh Symphonies. In addition to Dyudamel, the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra was recently conducted by Simon Rattle , Eduardo Mata , Zubin Meta , Claudio Abbado .

By 2010, the average age of the orchestra musicians exceeded 24 years, and therefore the orchestra was no longer called Youth, and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra took the place of the leading youth group in the System.