Concert

Gustavo Dudamel conducts Mahler: Symphony No. 8

Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra

Live

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This concert is presented by

Cast

Emily Magee — Soprano

Juliane Banse — Soprano

Anna Prohaska — Soprano

Yvonne Naef — Contralto

Birgit Remmert — Contralto

Klaus Florian Vogt — Tenor

Detlef Roth — Baritone

Robert Holl — Bass

Pablo Castellanos — Organist

Choristers of "Superar"

Salzburger Festspiele und Theater Kinderchor

Wolfgang Götz — Chorus master

Simón Bolívar National Youth Choir of Venezuela

Lourdes Sánchez — Chorus master

Wiener Singverein

Johannes Prinz — Chorus master

Program notes

The fiery Gustavo Dudamel conducts Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand at the Salzburg Festival.

The Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela (formerly known as the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela) is the orchestra of the music education program El Sistema, founded in 1975 by economist and musician José Antonio Abreu. The most illustrious representative of this program is certainly the superstar conductor Gustavo Dudamel himself, now at the head of both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra. This concert opens the El Sistema residency in Salzburg.

This performance also inaugurates the Mahler cycle of this 2013 edition of the Salzburg Festival. And the orchestra chose one of the composer's most impressive works, the Eighth Symphony, also called Symphony of a Thousand because of the huge amount of musicians needed to perform it.

The two hundred young musicians of the El Sistema orchestra join forces with the Simón Bolívar National Youth Choir of Venezuela, the Wiener Singverein, the Salzburger Festspiele und Theater Kinderchor, the singers of the Superar project, eight internationally reknowned soloists (Emily Magee, Juliane Banse, Anna Prohaska, Yvonne Naef, Birgit Remmert, Klaus Florian Vogt, Detlef Roth and Robert Holl) and the organist Pablo Castellanos.

For six months of the year, the orchestra works with its Music Director Gustavo Dudamel, with whom it also made its Salzburg Festival debut in 2008. In 2011 the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra whetted the Salzburg audience's appetite for more with its rousing performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 2.

Picture: Gustavo Dudamel © Nohely Oliveros.

A closer look: featured composers

Gustav Mahler

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