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Fat bass: Hundreds of strings played along in the record attempt
Photo: RAYNER PENA R. / EPA
After their mass concert last week, thousands of musicians from Venezuela can now officially be celebrated as the largest orchestra in the world.
On Saturday, a spokeswoman for the Guiness Book announced on Venezuelan television that the institution recognized the record.
At one point in Pyotr Tchaikovsky's »Slavonic March«, according to meticulous counting, exactly 8,573 orchestra members played at the same time - a good 500 more than the previous record set by an orchestra in 2019 with the Russian anthem in St. Petersburg.
Two years earlier, 7,548 musicians in Frankfurt am Main had won the title with symphonies by Antonín Dvořák and Ludwig van Beethoven, a song from the musical “Starlight Express” and the hymn “Music Was My First Love”.
The Venezuelan musicians were between twelve and 77 years old and played on a square in front of the military academy of the capital Caracas.
They are part of a network of 180 orchestras with 350,000 children and young people known as El Sistema (The System).
A total of 12,000 musicians were on site and also performed the national anthem »Venezuela« by Pablo Herrero and Jose Luis Armenteros, as well as Pedro Gutierrez 'piece »Alma Llanera«, which many people in the country regard as an unofficial anthem.
The Russian ambassador congratulates
According to the rules of the Guiness Book, a record only counts if the musicians play at the same time without anyone getting in or out or lending their instrument to other players.
The "Slavonic March" was ideal, as Tchaikovsky used most of the orchestra at the same time.
The musicians had to worry for almost a week whether the Guinness Book would recognize the record.
More than 250 inspectors had watched the orchestra closely.
But now the Venezuelan participants received the certificate.
Venezuela's Information Minister Freddy Nanez and Russian Ambassador to Caracas, Sergei Melik-Bagdasarow, congratulated the orchestra on Saturday in a speech that was broadcast on state television.
mpz / Reuters / AP