Sinfónica de la Juventud Venezolana Simón Bolívar
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Gustavo Dudamel
conductor
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
“Francesca da Rimini”, Op. 32. Symphonic Fantasy after Dante
Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
“An Alpine Symphony” for large orchestra, Op. 64
Venezuela has mountains, too – the snow-capped Pico Bolívar, for example, whose towering 15,000 feet place it well above Switzerland's giant Matterhorn, Jungfrau and Eiger. But the Sinfónica de la Juventud is travelling to Lucerne, not with an 'Andean symphony', but with 'An Alpine Symphony' by Richard Strauss, who never got as far as Caracas. The mountain tour takes us across glaciers to an ascent of the peak and a return through a thunderstorm. Its success is ensured by our guide Gustavo Dudamel, a young conductor born in 1981 who is himself an alumnus of Venezuela's educational system, and whose recent début as principal conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic drew storms of applause. To open the concert Dudamel will follow the trail marked out by Claudio Abbado the previous evening. Once again we will hear a work by Tchaikovsky, this time his orchestral fantasy 'Francesca da Rimini' after an episode from Dante's 'Divine Comedy'. Composed in 1876 immediately after his visit to the Bayreuth Festival, the work makes no secret of his debt to Wagner.