In praise of ... El Sistema

Tonight a sellout audience will, for the second time this week, pack the Royal Festival Hall in London to hear an amateur youth orchestra. It is improbable stuff - but only to those who have yet to be exposed to the astonishing Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, their conductor Gustavo Dudamel, and the back story of the system which has produced them. That system - El Sistema, to use its accustomed name - has famously been acclaimed by Simon Rattle, who said: "There is nothing more important in the world...