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The Royal Festival Hall has never seen anything quite like it: thousands swarming through its doors to listen to a rehearsal — and one by an amateur orchestra at that. Yet as its fanatical supporters would testify, the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra (SBYO) is not just another group of part-timers and the session yesterday morning was not just any rehearsal.

This was the cultural equivalent of the adoring crowds who turn up to gawp at dazzling footballers of Barcelona or Manchester United on the training ground. The SBYO is the most exciting, most joyful, most exotic orchestra in the world today. YouTube footage of the euphoric Proms appearance that crowned their last visit to Britain two years ago has been viewed more than a million times.

The rehearsal marked the opening of a five-day residency on the South Bank. Tickets for the main events — last night’s performance of Bartók and Tchaikovsky and a romp through Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and various Latin American works on Saturday — sold out ten months ago. One resold on eBay for more than £400.

A large part of the attraction is their pioneering social role. The orchestra is the standard bearer for El Sistema (The System), a radical scheme that has, over 34 years, used classical music tuition to build the self-confidence, skills and discipline of more than 300,000 young Venezuelans, many of them from the grimmest, most dangerous barrios in their country. Similar programmes are being introduced across the Caribbean, Latin America and Europe, including at least four in Britain — in Stirling, Liverpool, Lambeth and Norwich.

Read more at The Times