This is the kind of CD that makes you rub your ears. These are kids from the lowest slums of Caracas, some of them as young as twelve. They sound accomplished. And in fact, better than a lot of professional orchestras. The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra delivers a Rite of Spring that stands comparison with the best.

Dudamel’s reading is as energised and violently exultant as the old standard, Leonard Bernstein with the NY Philharmonic. Except for the eerie opening solo from the bassoon and the hushed interlude before the maiden dances herself to death, every bar is hair-raising.

Dudamel has both a charismatic and a callow side. Here, the two meld. This isn’t a reflective or thoughtful Le sacre. It’s Le sacre for the cast of “Stomp!” Not that thoughtful is a completley desirable way to approach Stravinsky’s barbaric masterpiece to begin with. Better to say perhaps that Dudamel has found his own style. He departs from Boulez’s analytical dissection, the Stravinsky’s own razor-sharp frigidity, and Maazel’s frenetic virtuosity.

Dudamel makes the score come alive viscerally. Dudamel has also made a crusade out of promoting the music of Mexico and South America. Here we get a second version of primitivism from Silvestre Revueltas, the visionary Mexican modernist who died just short of his forty-first birthday in 1940. Revueltas had heard Le sacre with open ears and offered a Latin descendant in his well known Sensamaya (Bernstein was a fan and made an early, riveting recording of it). Dudamel performs a suite taken from the 1939 film “La noche de los mayas,” directed by Chano Urueta, a contemporary of the composer’s who made films up to 1974. the style is crushingly primordial, and spookily reminiscent at times of Messiaen once the birds have flown south. Dudamel gives what sounds like a definitive performance and since the youthful percussionists of the SBYO are incendiary, the listener won’t miss the percussion cadenza added to the suite after the composer’s death.

In all, this is a recording to make you believe in Dudamel’s potential and to celebrate the growth of an impoverished youth orchestra into a force for joy and light.

For an idea of the Dudamel magic, check out the Beethoven 5th rehearsal clip.

Ambrose Bierce defined the accordion as “An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.” What’s wrong with the accordion, I ask.

Those who disrespect the accordion turn their backs on an instrument that can score every mood from depression to elation. Enter Richard Galliano’s ‘Bach’, a collection of music that should put to rest any negative connotations associated with the accordion.

One might not know it, given the instrument’s unwarranted red-headed-stepchild status, but Bach on the accordion has a venerable history. The legendary Charles Magnante, for example, opened his 1939 Carnegie Hall concert with the Toccata and Fugue in D minor.

So it’s natural that Richard Galliano, the superb French jazz accordionist, would then turn to Bach for his first classical recording. But Galliano, unusually, ventures beyond keyboard repertoire, offering transcriptions of not only the Fifth Harpsichord Concerto (BWV 1056), but also the A-minor Violin Concerto (BWV 1041) and the Concerto for Violin and Oboe (BWV 1060), as well as a handful of Bach greatest hits. Galliano, one of the foremost accordionists of our time, has practiced and performed Bach over the years, but this is the first time he has recorded the composer’s works. Accompanied by a string quintet, Galliano’s interpretations of familiar pieces such as Orchestral Suite no. 3 in D Major and Sonata for Flute and Harpsichord no. 2 in E flat major soar. Every piece performed is a gem unto itself. Playing the accordion since the age of four and recipient of the Académie du Jazz’s Django Reinhardt Prize (“French Musician of the Year,” 1993), Galliano presents his audience with faithful renderings of the music as Bach wrote it. As in any great orchestral production, the music elevates the listener who is not hearing an accordion, but the works of a master played by a master.

Dating back to the early nineteenth century, the accordion has long supplied the melody for folk music from a variety of cultures. What’s klezmer or a tarantella or a polka without an accordion? Accordionists have been the subject of jokes and wisecracks, yet they are handling an extremely complex instrument that is suited to a wide variety of music, from folk to rock to classical. Those who master it can produce rich sound that does not require accompaniment. And, really, is there anything more romantic than having a strolling accordionist stopping by a candlelit table and playing “That’s Amore”? Ok, some may find it tacky but then you can’t win them all…