Blowing gales of fresh air through the dusty classical music scene ... Gustavo Dudamel. Photograph: Chris Lee/AP
Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, 27, is the most important thing to have happened to classical music for a long while. If you are in London tonight, or near London, drop everything and queue for his Prom. If you can't get to the Royal Albert Hall, stay in and park yourself next to your radio.
Last night I heard him do a similar programme at Usher Hall, as part of the Edinburgh international festival. Appalachian Spring reduced me to tears. I'd certainly never heard it performed like this before: tender and vulgar by turns, the fiddles' accented notes as sharp as icicles. There was one of those extraordinary, endless silences at the close of the piece, when 2,500 people held their collective breath for about a minute before the applause began. Then there was the swirling, decadent, darkly fairytaleish La Valse, somehow the musical equivalent of one of Powell and Pressburger's weirder films, and the madly obsessive, demonic Symphonie Fantastique.
You'll probably know that Dudamel is the product of a very particular Venezuelan music-education system, which you can read about here. And for more on Dudamel himself, here's the short version, from the Guardian, and the long version, from the New York Times. And here's a little film made by the Philharmonia Orchestra. The fact of the matter is that Dudamel is blowing gales of fresh air through the often rather dusty classical music scene - and has much to teach us, I believe. I'm planning a piece on the subject for tomorrow's Comment pages, so stay tuned.
.png?w=600)
