Anyone who saw the incredible Prom concert given in London last year by these Venezuelan youngsters won’t be surprised by the tumultuous acclaim that they are receiving this summer at venerable festivals on mainland Europe. The Swiss and Austrians may take their classical music very seriously. But when all 180 players of the huge Simón BolÍvar Orchestra don jackets embroidered with their national colours, twirl their instruments in the air and break into a jubilant platform mambo while maintaining split-second precision in one of Bernstein’s scarier West Side Story dances, the audience response is exactly as it was in the Albert Hall last year: wide-eyed, incredulous ecstasy.

But there’s a special piquancy about witnessing such a response in one of the holiest inner sanctums of the Austro-German musical world: the Felsenreitschule in Salzburg. In Karajan’s heyday the concerts in this austere auditorium had all the exuberance of state funerals. Was that only 25 years ago? It seems like another age. As Gustavo Dudamel powered his huge string section (13 double basses, and I lost count of the fiddles) and fierce brass through Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony like a stampede of teenagers through a staid museum, the faint whirring sound in the background might have been Herbert von K spinning in his grave.

True, everything the Venezuelans do is over-the-top. This is a youth orchestra that has redefined the very word flamboyance. Tchaikovsky’s allegros were so prestissimo that you imagined steam rising from the fiddlers’ flying fingers. The gorgeously played horn solo in the slow movement was as melancholic as anything in Dostoevsky. And every dynamic marking, from the ultra-pianissimo of the opening to the ear-splitting blaze of sound at the end, was cartoonishly underlined.

But so what? Tasteful, delicately nuanced performances are two a penny in Europe’s concert halls. When these virtuosic Venezuelan youngsters play – especially the hyperactive music of their own continent (frenetic and exhilaratingly bitonal dance suites by Evencio Castellanos and Arturo Márquez were included here) – the sense of the New World remaking, refreshing and rescuing the Old is overwhelming.

No Proms appearance this year, sadly, by this marvellous orchestra. But Dudamel and his charismatic young players will be in London next April for a five-day residency at the Southbank Centre. Few Latin lessons will be as eagerly anticipated.

Editor's choice

• Vote for the Breakthrough Award winner
• David Tennant back as Hamlet after back surgery
• Matt Smith is the new Dr Who