More youthful energy from the Venezuelans

(Gustavo Dudamel and the orchestra during the first of the many, many, many curtain calls.)

FRI, NOV 2 - The second program of Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra's concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall were still loud, but this time it was broken up into a bunch of chunks for the loudness to be more readily appreciated. They started with a very vigorous playing of Beethoven's 5th Symphony, which is among my favorite works even if it gets played very, very often. There were a ton more musicians playing it than usual (I think they double or tripled some sections), so again we got lots of loudness perhaps at the expense of clarity and detail in some passages. But they players were all so enthusiastic that it didn't seem to matter so much; during the first movement, one violinist kept hopping out of his seat he was playing so excitedly. The second half of the program was several shorter pieces by Latin composers: Moncayo's Huapango, Márquez:'s Danzón No. 2 and Ginastera's Suite from Estancia. Their shorter length gave more chance for the audience to keep clapping, and the pieces were orchestrated to let the orchestra have much more fun with its enormous size. After all this, there were, I kid you not, FIVE encores that went on for well over 20 minutes. They dimmed the lights, and when the lights came back, the kids were all decked out in Venezuela-flag jackets, and the clearly supportive audience went nuts. John Williams came onto the stage and conducted a playing of the Star Wars theme, the orchestra's founder José Antonio Abreu was pulled into conducting an encore, and the audience just applauded and applauded and applauded. I'm still amused that my ears were ringing for a good 20 minutes after leaving (I thought that only happened at rock concerts), but I must admit, I had fun.