Seven years ago, shortly after Jaap van Zweden was appointed Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, I listened to as many of his commercial recordings as I could get my hands on them, in order to get a better sense of his conducting sense. I heard it all. I don’t exactly remember it as a pleasant experience, but when I have to recall it at all, I’ve never flattered him that much.
Now that the next music director of the Philharmonic Orchestra has been decided, it’s Gustavo Dudamel’s turn.
This exercise is a different proposition and thankfully it’s not exhausting. Van Zweden He wasn’t very well known when the Philharmonic hired him, and even avid collectors may be forgiven for not knowing his latest releases. Dudamel is a Hollywood star celebrity and enjoys a longstanding relationship with the Deutsche Grammophon label.upon May 19thmaking his first appearance with the Philharmonic Orchestra since his appointment, which will take effect in 2026, conducting Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.
The Philharmonic has high hopes for the 42-year-old Dudamel, who will make a record anyway, but probably didn’t hire him first and foremost to give him the agenda of putting Beethoven and Brahms on disc. I don’t think so. The Society hopes that he will become a greater figure, a talisman to delight and enthuse audiences that the orchestra has not yet enraptured.
His conducting has always been somewhat overshadowed by the dizzying hype surrounding his vision of making music as a transformative force. hello, “Classical Music Savior” Although less common than it once was, the cliché remains that he’s a musical spur of the moment and an endorsement of eternal youth since his rise to stardom in the mid-2000s. As he told The New York Times in February, he still has to say, “I’m no longer a young conductor.”
Dudamel himself has often suggested that he never was.When he was 26, Bob Simon “60 minutes” I asked him if he was too young to be a conductor. He replied that he has been conducting since he was 12, adding that he still has a lot to learn. “I’m not that old. I’m 30,” he said. Said Critic Mark Swed said in 2011: “But I feel old.” Likewise, many critics over the years have described Dudamel’s approach as that of a much more senior musician. Alex Ross of The New Yorker recently said, was suggested “He was, in a way, too old to begin with.”
So perhaps you listen to Dudamel’s recordings not only to hear the rising child prodigy, but also to the way he grew up so quickly, the rich experience of being blessed with star-studded mentors for most of his career. It would be best to hear that he became a musician laden with music. , and has performed with the world’s finest orchestras for nearly 20 years. With that in mind, his discography should attract more than reasonable support.
I’m not saying it’s bad. Most of Dudamel’s recordings are perfectly listenable and some, like his sets, are impressive. Symphony of Ives Since 2009, he has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra led by him. Few are outraged or appalled, but he tends to disapprove of Dudamel, who seems to be an energetic All-Star. Some of his reading is frankly pretty solid. On the whole, he appears to be a very capable musician, but he has yet to acquire the brilliance of his flair for detail and imagination that would mark him as an extraordinary conductor.
it’s hard now To perfectly recall the overheated hysteria that Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela caused when they began playing mambo in concert halls in Europe and North America. yellow, red and blue jacket. I was just a teenager when I attended their almost mythical event without a doubt. concert At the London Proms in 2007. A grown man snatched the jacket from my hands as the players threw it into the euphoric crowd. same year, one critic He called Dudamel and Bolivar “the greatest show on earth”.
El Sistema, the educational program from which the Bolivar family was born, later found itself caught up in the darkness of Venezuelan politics. Dudamel’s public opposition to President Nicolás Maduro’s government in 2017 was prompted by the shooting of a young viola player on the show, Armando Cañizares, during a protest. Mr. Dudamel is still the music director of the Bolivar family, but they are aging and the young orchestra has no income.A long time ago and last November he finally felt can visit Back home after a long time. In August, he will lead Bolivar for the first time in six years. Edinburgh Festival. He sounds the freest in this ensemble. phone Taken together, “my family” and its records give a basic sense of his musical personality.
At the heart of Dudamel’s psyche is musical joy, and nowhere is it more evident. “Festa” A recording of his infectious Latin American music. In his early years he succeeded in enhancing the emotional content of his scores, which explains his Tchaikovsky’s extreme tempo. “Francesca da Rimini” and Symphony No.5the other shakespeare Fantasy — it explodes so thrilling when he finally starts doing something easy. Since then, he’s softened the characterization, but a recent Los Angeles Philharmonic commentary on Dvořák says: “new world” Symphony suggests that he did not completely abandon it.
Other elements of Dudamel’s style are present and accurate. He prefers to emphasize the melodic forms of his works rather than the harmonic foundation. “Tristan” Prelude and Subtle Lee Bested Wagner So the collection is clean, but loose. There is also a certain rhythmic fluffiness, and a reluctance to give the rhythm a precise character.it means someone with enthusiasm “Spring Festival” Far from barbaric, the same issues weigh heavily on his very different repertoire in 2017. new year concert He has performed with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and although his waltzes and polkas are often fascinating, there are also many leading performances.
A lot of it has to do with what Dudamel likes, or at least grew up with, that sound. The Bolivars were a huge orchestra, a spectacle not only musically but visually, their sonic masses dull and overwhelming. No wonder their conductors prefer full sound. It doesn’t necessarily matter. But the fact is that his sound picked up by the mic can appear flat.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter so much: there is a patient Bruckner 9th The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra accepted Dudamel as an apprentice as Principal Conductor from 2007 to 2012, despite his longevity. But it lacks enough sonic differentiation to liven up his music. mussorgsky Vienna or where he is from Strauss Having performed with the Berliner Philharmoniker, the same problem creeps into some of his Mahler pieces. 5th symphony The Berlin performance is more cautious and less interesting than the 5th movement, which is impressive with its lovely and relaxed adagietto. him and the bolivar family Founded in 2006. 3rd from Berlin Similar: Clarity, but nothing more.
Then Dudamel’s Beethoven.his first recording The Bolívar family paired a shaky No. 5 with a lively No. 7 with a drive that still amazes me today.alas, after “Eroica” not; nor is there a series of self-published symphonies dating back to a concert in Venezuela in 2015. Slow and not entirely steady, this is Beethoven so futuristic that it might have felt conservative a couple of generations ago.I don’t care if those readings are more like his satisfaction the 4thAnd then there was the formal safety and dramatic tension that this aesthetic demands.
For the Los Angeles Philharmonic As New York Times critic Zachary Wolfe wrote in 2017, during Dudamel’s tenure the orchestra did indeed become “America’s most important orchestra,” but its success was partly due to its recordings. I can’t hear anything. The dire economic realities of the streaming age are such that even Dudamel, despite his fame, doesn’t get the chance to tinker with his own interpretations in the studio like his previous generation of conductors.
Also, Dudamel has not been able to fully maintain the loyalty to the new music he and his players have shown in their performances.Recordings by Andrew Norman “keep” and Thomas Adès “Dante” Ballet is so precious heard Ades directs some of the score more boldly. At the very least, Dudamel’s Los Angeles discography is significant evidence of his support for John Adams. “The Gospel According to Another Mary” and “Should the devil have all the good songs?” have great mental strength “Slonimsky’s ear box”
The caveat is justifiably lamented, but it’s still enough to continue here. Dudamel’s early years at the Walt Disney Concert Hall are well documented. Highlights include an exhilarating, soft-focused Bartok. “Concerto for Orchestra” Debut in January 2007 and an ambitious and powerful Brahms the 4th who won grammy awards. But most of the live concerts of the time were routine, and Mahler is uneven. beginning This song from the inaugural gala in 2009 is worth listening primarily as a bassline for later improvements to the Mahler recordings in Los Angeles.warm and caring the ninth After 2012, we could have more snaps and bites, but they were tightly controlled. 8th Effective from 2019.
But what’s still strange is that what should have been an easy home run record isn’t.It took Deutsche Grammophon five years to release Dudamel’s work “Nutcracker” After a concert in 2013, the first listen was pleasant enough, but the second listen revealed why: rhythmic shyness, and a few tones less than fairy-light brightness. dull color.Dudamel on all his touching moments of 2019 respect A similar hesitation lurks in his friend John Williams. When Williams conducts the “Imperial March,” he can scare you with the Empire’s full-on combat power. with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestraand mocks its vanity, saying: with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Dudamel has not commented on it at all.
I’m curious about this kind of thing. The New York Philharmonic hailed Dudamel as a revival of Leonard Bernstein, a figure who would actually restore the orchestra to a position it had only enjoyed periodically in its history. But whatever Bernstein was, he was a unique conductor. who knows? Maybe Dudamel could do the same. But he has work to do.
