Gustavo Dudamel /Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela RITE Stravinsky - Revueltas

“There is inside me a very peculiar understanding of nature", the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas once wrote. “Everything is rhythm. That's what music is to me. My rhythms are booming, dynamic, tactile, visual. I think in images that move dynamically." There could hardly be a better description of Revueltas's La noche de los Mayas or of Stravinsky's Sacre du printemps, the two works in Gustavo Dudamel's new recording with the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela.

“All these dances have a youthful energy", says Gustavo Dudamel. “Spring reflects a new beginning, something important to young people. I've known the Sacre since my first concert as a thirteen-year-old violinist in my hometown orchestra. Now it's also an important piece for the SBYOV. We first played it in 2009 in London, Madrid, Lisbon and, of course, several times in Venezuela. This orchestra simply have these rhythms in their blood - they even make one passage sound like heavy metal."
Powerful dance rhythms also dominate Revueltas's music for a 1939 film about the cultural clash between a tribe of Mayans and the modern world. Like Stravinsky's great ballet, the symphonic suite La noche de los Mayas is evocative, ritualistic music, and it ends with a wild sacrificial dance calling for elevenpercussionists. “It makes a perfect coupling for the Sacre", exclaims Gustavo Dudamel. And this explosive, mysteriously atmospheric coupling makes aperfect program for the most dynamic conductor and young musicians in the world today. (Deutsche Grammophon / 2010)

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