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.