Chile 2001

The Hampshire County Youth Orchestra has recently returned from an historic tour of Chile. This was the first ever visit by a British youth orchestra to Chile, and the largest group ever to tour the country. Given under the auspices of the British Embassy in Chile, and with the support of the Chilean Embassy in London, the tour spanned the entire range of the country, from the Atacama Desert in the north to the near Antarctic conditions of the capital of Chilean Patagonia, Punta Arenas. Not only did the tour take the orchestra to geographical extremes, but the concerts also involved a wide range of communities, from the opera houses of Santiago and Vi?a del Mar to the sports hall in Curanilahue, officially designated recently as the most deprived town in Chile.

Under President Lagos, whom the conductor of the Hampshire County Youth Orchestra, Nicholas Wilks, met in May, the youth orchestra movement has had something of a rebirth in Chile. There is an exciting programme of instrumental teaching, the purchase of instruments and the formation of new orchestras throughout Chile, and as part of their contribution to this process, the Hampshire County Youth Orchestra played with young Chilean musicians from a number of youth orchestras, and gave school and community concerts throughout the country.

The players themselves were overwhelmed by the experience. The reception given to the orchestra wherever they went at times bordered on adulation. On one occasion in Santiago audiences were literally fighting to get in to hear a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and at the orchestra's final concert in Vi?a del Mar the orchestra found themselves compelled to repeat their encores before the audience would allow them to leave. There was also extensive media coverage, including newspaper articles, radio and television. The final concert in Punta Arenas was