Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela plays it loud at Walt Disney Concert Hall

(Huge, huge company: Gustavo Dudamel, smiling center, and the Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela at Walt Disney Concert Hall.)

THURS, NOV 1 - There was a well deserved, spontaneous standing ovation at the end of Mahler's 5th tonight, after Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela played it to a sold-out, very excited audience at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The whole performance was loud - really loud (my ears were aching a bit afterwards!) - perhaps as much a product of their enthusiasm as the big orchestra pieces repertory chosen for the program. They didn't play like any youth orchestra that I've ever seen, with each player exhibiting such a confident, mature musicianship that one could easily think they were a fully professional orchestra. Their youth appeared in little bursts of enthusiasm: delirious grins while taking their curtain calls for example (the old pros tend stand around somberly while wait for us to get the hell out), or goofball laughter and antics while they waited for the lights to dim in the auditorium.

The music and the institution that makes the National Youth Orchestra exist (read this article in the Guardian) evidently inspires enormous respect out of the entire group: before the Mahler, there was a very long, pregnant pause while they waited for the orchestra's founder to get to his seat in audience - and when he entered the auditorium, he got his own spontaneous standing ovation from the kids in the orchestra.

The program opener, Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, is more of the kind of repertoire that you'd expect a youth orchestra to play: recognizable tunes, and music in chunks designed to show off an enormous orchestra and all its facets. The playing was great fun, especially hearing 100 plus musicians create such a large, resonant sound, and do it so rollickingly. Their playing of Mahler's 5th Symphony, a very long 75-minute, five-movement work, was the a little more unusual for it's length. That they went through it with such focus and determination was one thing, that the sound they produced shimmered and glowed was probably what inspired the audience to jump to its feet. Dudamel, who becomes the LA Phil's music director in 2009, deserves huge applause for his interpretation, and his ability to coax such a wonderful performance out of the orchestra.

(The crowd stands.)

Tomorrow, Dudamel and the orchestra will play Beethoven's 5th plus assorted works by several Latin composers. I certainly won't mind the high volume on the Beethoven - I do like my Beethoven's 5th loud - and I can't imagine that the Latin pieces will be anything but fun. So there's some to look forward to tomorrow night.