Gustavo Dudamel / Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela FIESTA

Recording a selection of Latin American pieces after a Beethoven and a Mahler disc is not as far-fetched as it may seem. Indeed, for Gustavo Dudamel the distance between Beethoven and the Venezuelan composer Carreño is only as great as a dance step. “My father played in a salsa group," he remembers, “so I started to dance when I was really small - a baby. You know, learning to dance is part of our culture - dancing is in our blood ... Latin music is all about dance, about rhythm. And we try to put this spice into all of our music. With Mahler - the second movement of the Fifth Symphony is so full of energy - or the last movement of Beethoven 7, or the first movement - there is a feeling of dance."

It was logical, then, that Dudamel's third recording for Deutsche Grammophon would be a disc of Latin American music. “Often in a concert we will play a Beethoven or Mahler symphony, but in the first half we might perform Castellano and Ginastera. To us, there is a close connection, because music is first of all energy and movement. Mahler and Beethoven are important, but it's also important to have the opportunity to present our own music. For this recording we decided to choose small pieces by different composers, to show the beauty of Latin American music. We created a little mosaic of the best. It's like a party, a fiesta."
Dudamel's selection includes four Venezuelan composers, two Mexicans and an Argentine. Leonard Bernstein's spirited Mambo, a nod to Latin exuberance from the North, which the Venezuelans have made their own, rounds off the collection. (Shirley Apthorp 3/2008)

Here is confirmation of a pulsating talent and, perhaps, a glimpse of the future. Dudamel's charisma beats through every bar of this scintillating survey of Latin American music. His Venezuelan players . . . play as if their hearts are fit to burst with pride as well as passion. And they sound magnificent, textures sharp and clean, driven on with rhythmic momentum. It's an enormous orchestra and at full-throttle the sound they make is awe-inspiring . . . 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 . . . their rhythmic nous and heightened melodic expressivity override the longueurs . . . inevitably it's the infectious hardcore Latin spirit that, once sampled, stays embedded in your imagination.

Record Review / Philip Clark, Gramophone (London) / 01. August 2008

. . . it's a stirring collection of strong, moving works resounding to a tropical beat . . . the amazing, 27-year-old Dudamel, who catches the throb of this mighty, slashing music and passes it on to the equally extraordinary youngsters of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra . . . has honed his youthful charges to a responsiveness, a sheen in the string tone, an ebullience in the winds and brass, that elevate the Bolivar to a level far above any youth band in recent memory . . . Inherent in the new disc, therefore, are multiple levels of pride. Consider first the triumph of the young conductor and the orchestra he has developed out of the cream of Venezuela's youthful talent. Consider then their music: the rhythms and orchestral colors of composers nurtured on these homelands, carving a musical language from beloved surroundings. Consider finally the man in charge, diminutive, dimpled, a phenomenally talented bearer of the message of rebirth for this whole business of classical music.

Record Review / Alan Rich, Bloomberg.com / 01. August 2008