Dudamel in Rome with the Orchestra of the Accademia di S.Cecilia……
Beethoven Egmont
Symphonies 4&7

The joy of music was written all over his face and his humility to be one of the boys in the band.
He refused to mount the podium once his job was done.
Obviously the orchestra loved him as did the audience.

What he lacks in refinement he makes up for with his infectious love for music.
Real Latin temperament that favours the drums rather than the distilling of rarefied sounds.

Ten years at the helm of the Los Angeles Philharmonic have put them on the map so the PR boys chant in the programme.

Maybe they forgot Giulini who was there in his final glorious years before moving back to Milan!

Some silver sheen to the curly mop that took the world by storm with his Bolivar Orchestra with their gloriously outragious S.American music and attire.
Discovered by Abbado in Venezuela and invited to Europe.

When they arrived in Rome for the first time,the aristocratic season ticket audience went crazy for them.
Lights off.

A quick change into track suits and they were throwing their instruments in the air whilst playing!

Certainly not the refined music making in dress suits that we were used to!

This is the raw music making of the exilarating discovery of music rather than the rough dangerous world on the streets.

A passion and something to strive for that is far removed from the hunger and crime that was their birthright.

I was at a party in London when they were invited for the first time to the proms.
Some of the guests were coming on after the concert.

One of them the leader of the LSO.
Well they arrived at the party with such wondrous tales and such exilaration.

Dudamel and his band of the Experiment had spun their web and taken London by storm.
The spell was set and now in middle age the same wondrous joy of music making has remained in tact.

When you come from such a deprived background your fairy godfather you never forget.