(Bloomberg) — No one at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Friday night will likely forget the sight of 170 young musicians in matching yellow-blue-and-red windbreakers whooping it up onstage.

The capacity crowd could have been cheering a winning sports team.

The occasion was the second of two concerts featuring Venezuela's Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in its US debut.

The windbreakers, complete with white stars and evoking the Venezuelan flag, were donned for the encores, which included the theme to "Star Wars" conducted by its creator John Williams.

Otherwise, the youngsters (aged 12 to 26) were in the hands of their star boss, Gustavo Dudamel, just 26 himself, and their music director since 1999.

The buzz surrounding Dudamel has been immense, and deservedly so.

The adventurous people who run the Los Angeles Philharmonic last spring named him to succeed Esa-Pekka Salonen as music director at Disney Hall. So this concert had special significance. In two years, the Venezuelan will be maestro of this stunning house designed by Frank Gehry.

Though these young players won't be relocating to L.A., Dudamel's success in the City of Angels is also theirs.

Like his charges, Dudamel rose through the ranks of "el sistema," shorthand for Venezuela's vaunted music-education system, which teaches instrumental music to about 250,000 predominantly poor children and sponsors roughly 125 youth orchestras.

In addition to producing Dudamel, el sistema has supplied the Berlin Philharmonic with double-bassist Edicson Ruiz, 22, the second-youngest player in its history.

As de facto cultural ambassadors, Dudamel and his orchestra understandably wanted to show off their country's achievement, and their programs effectively combined familiar works by Beethoven, Mahler and Bernstein with underappreciated scores from Latin America's rich orchestral tradition — in this case by Jose Pablo Moncayo, Arturo Marquez and Alberto Ginastera.

The musical results, though inherently inspiring, were mixed. With so many musicians on stage — never fewer than 100 and often half as much again — subtlety was not an option.

In the Latin works, the muchness at least enhanced the fun, with the orchestra's blaring brasses, swooping strings and assertive percussion nearly blowing the roof off Disney Hall.

Regulating dynamics proved next to impossible, even for a skilled technician such as Dudamel, a man with a clear beat and sensible gestures.

Like his hero Bernstein, whose "Symphonic Dances From West Side Story" opened Thursday's concert, Dudamel isn't afraid to jump when the music moves him, and his undulant body language and shaking black curls provide appealing showmanship.

More depth than dash is required for Mahler's Fifth Symphony, which followed the Bernstein.

There were moments to savor, as Dudamel pointed up an unanticipated modernist twist or martial turn in the score.

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony the following night was more gratifying.

Ironically, given the ages of the players and conductor, this was an old-school account: blunt and big, if not very nimble and flexible.

Yet who could resist the energy of this storming-the-heavens account? Not many at Disney Hall.

Gustavo Dudamel leads the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra at Symphony Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York on November 11 and 12. He also conducts the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall from November 29 through December 4.

David Mermelstein is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.