Easter Lucerne Festival 2010

Easter Lucerne Festival 2010. Claudio Abbado conducts the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, with guest singer Anna Prohaska, at Lucerne:

1. Prokofiev Scythian Suite

2. Berg Lulu Suite

3. Mozart "Ach, ich fühl's, es ist verschwunden" from Die Zauberflöte

4. Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 "Pathétique"

Directed for TV by Michael Beyer. Released 2011, disc has 5.1 Dolby Digital and dts-HD sound. Grade: X-B

In the EuroArts Blu-ray documentary El Sistema, we learned about the famous Venezuelan youth classical music movement. While watching the documentary, I kept wishing to hear more actual music from the students. Well, that's what we have in this Easter concert at the Lucerne Festival. I take it that this huge orchestra of mostly young adults, augmented by a few teachers (I think), is the top ensemble produced by the El Sistema movement. It's inspiring to see these students selected from a national mass-education program playing at the semi-pro level at an elite festival. But on the other hand, it would be unrealistic to expect renditions here that would be competitive with the mostly world-class orchestras we are now enjoying in HDVD. We have the "X" rating for situations like this: if you are interested in youth orchestras, then this disc should be graded at least a B. But if you would be interested in this title for the music recorded, this would probably not be a good purchase. The Prokofiev and Berg pieces are too hard for semi-pros (Anna Prohaska did give everybody the creeps as Lulu.) True, the youth orchestra's playing of the Tchaikovsky Pathétique seemed to produce a kind of rapture in both Abbado and the sophisticated, elegantly turned-out Lucerne audience. But we have other HDVD recordings of the Pathétique by world-class forces that overshadow what students can do.