ALL ABOUT RHYTHM: DUDAMEL AND THE VENEZUELAN YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Above: Dudamel, Carreño, Aldemaro Romero, cover of disc.

The latest disc with Venezuelan young conductor Gustavo Dudamel is a wonderful introduction to Latin American classical music and, especially, to Venezuelan classical music. What a banquet!

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Move over, Rite of Spring! Here comes Sensemaya…. The powerful drums in Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas’ ballet suggest a world even more dramatic than that of the dinosaurs and volcanoes created by Walt Disney to represent Stravinsky’s work. After this orgy of drums follows one of the more beloved pieces in the Venezuelan classic repertoire: “Margariteña Suite”, by Inocente Carreño.This suite is based on two well-known folklore ballads from the island of Margarita: “Margarita is a tear” and “Los Chimichimitos”. In “Margarita is a tear” the lyrics speak about the island being formed by the tear of a Cherub falling into the depths of the sea. From this tear came a pearl and this pearl is Margarita. The whole symphonic poem is full of wonderful melodies instantly recognized by all Venezuelans, in the same manner most peoples near the Caspian Sea recognize Kachaturian’s melodies from “Gayne” and “Spartacus”. I consider myself fortunate at having met the composer Carreño, some years ago, in a very unusual setting. As I was walking through a small Caracas park I saw him sitting under the harsh Caracas sun, in a bench, feeding the pigeons, looking very fragile, very much alone. I sat next to him, exchanging good mornings, but nothing else. Unconsciously I began to whistle, softly, the main theme of his symphonic poem. I knew it very well, and as I went ahead, I could see him smiling. Suddenly he stood up and, facing me, began to direct an imaginary orchestra. He smiled broadly at me and said: “You are good!”.
If Carreño’s piece uses effectively all the orchestra and has many rousing moments, the next selection in the disc is like a beautiful diamond glittering in the hand of a beautiful woman: “Noon in the Venezuelan plains”, by Antonio Estevez. It is a delicate piece, very impressionistic, one that could have been proudly signed by Claude Debussy or by Maurice Ravel. It evokes the slow rising of the sun over the infinite flatness of the Venezuelan llanos, the land that witnessed some of the hardest battles for Venezuelan independence. The main theme is that of the sun finally presiding, in all its majesty, over the landscape.
The fiesta continues with the wonderful Danzon No. 2, by the Mexican composer Arturo Marquez. This is one for dancing, an irresistible call to movement. As in the case of Copland’s Salon Mexico or Lalo’s Spanish Symphony, works written by foreign composers who managed to capture superbly the hearts of their chosen subjects, this danzon written by a Mexican is more Cuban than anything a Cuban could have written.
Dudamel and the Orchestra continue with a magnificent fugue by my favorite Venezuelan composer, Aldemaro Romero: “Fugue with Pajarillo”. The pajarillo is a popular folkloric dance of Venezuela. Dudamel describes it as similar to the waltz but with the “accent on the weak beat – not ONE two three but one TWO three, one TWO three…” What I find magnificent about this piece is the use of the fugue by Romero, a self-taught composer from Valencia, Venezuela, who never studied music and yet could write such a marvelous and complex hybrid of folklore and Bach-like fugue, a most fortunate blend of the local and the universal.
Following the happy and vibrant fugue by Aldemaro Romero, Dudamel offers us another imperious call to dance: Argentinean Alberto Ginastera’s “Dances from The Estancia”. The drums appear again with tremendous energy and the scenes of “gauchos” working in the immense Argentinean “pampas” fill our senses. Not even the musicians can remain seated during the final dance.
The musical banquet continues with “Santa Cruz de Pacairigua”, by Venezuelan composer Evencio Castellanos. This composition has to do with a religious festivity, probably Corpus Christi, in the small church of Pacairigua, outside Caracas. It is one of the pieces that I first heard when I started to attend the concerts of the Venezuelan Symphony Orchestra. These concerts were held in the old Caracas Municipal Theatre and were free of charge, the only way, at the time, to attract a crowd to a classical music concert in Caracas. I had not heard it for almost fifty years and I now find it even better, with its combination of folkloric airs, paroxistic rhythms and, even, a suggestion of Gregorian chants towards the end.
The great Duda-fiesta closes with Leonard Bernstein’s “Mambo”, from his larger work “West Side Story”. By this time everyone will be dancing, the musicians and the spectators. The fiesta of this marvelous orchestra and its contagiously happy director ends as it began, with our feet and bodies moving to the sound of the drums and Latin beat that Dudamel is efficiently spreading all over the world.

FIESTA
Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela
Gustavo Dudamel, conductor.
Recorded live in Caracas, January 2008
75 minutes, 57 seconds.
Deutsche Grammophon B-0011340-02
Distributed by Universal Music Distribution
$16.97