Not so long ago, becoming a world-beating classical musician required study at a historic conservatoire in either Vienna, London or New York. Now that classical music has become global, there are new routes to the top.
So far none has been more spectacularly successful than Venezuela’s regional network of music schools and youth orchestras known as El Sistema. The ‘system’ claims to have rescued thousands of children from a potential life of crime on the streets, most notably Gustavo Dudamel, probably the best-known conductor on the planet, who now leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Fast catching up with Dudamel is conductor Rafael Payare, who, like Dudamel, began his career in El Sistema’s regional nuclei – or schools. Born to a cartographer and primary school teacher in the coastal town of Puerto la Cruz, Payare first became aware of music aged 14, when his brother – who played in the orchestra of the nucleus – played a CD that included Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Little Payare was seized by the “wonderful brassy sound” of the French horn.
Payare accompanied his brother to a rehearsal, where a brass teacher put a horn in his hand. “It made a sound straight away and I thought yes, this is the instrument for me,” says Payare, now 42, with a strong Venezuelan accent. “Three weeks later I joined the orchestra.”
Soon, Payare was playing principal horn in El Sistema’s flagship Children’s Orchestra in Caracas, later graduating to the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, with which he performed at the Proms and elsewhere. In a full circle moment, this weekend he conducts the same orchestra at Edinburgh International Festival.
