* MAY 6, 2010
With Gustavo Dudamel
Before His U.S. Tour Begins
By DAVID MERMELSTEIN
Los Angeles
The young Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel is so personable, unpretentious and full of energy that it's easy to see why even seasoned journalists treat him with kid gloves. Yet as he approaches the end of his inaugural season as the Los Angeles Philharmonic's music director, his first major post, an assessment of his achievements seems in order.
[ccdudamel] Zina Saunders
He and the orchestra have just concluded "Americas & Americans," a small series of concerts billed as his first festival with the ensemble, and they are about to embark on their first tour: an eight-city trek across the U.S., beginning in San Francisco on May 10 and culminating in New York on May 22. The programs feature works by Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Bernstein and John Adams.
On a Saturday afternoon last month, Mr. Dudamel, age 29, looked entirely at ease wearing jeans and an orange rugby shirt while sitting in his bright, airy and still largely unfurnished office at the Walt Disney Concert Hall—a space until recently the private domain of Esa-Pekka Salonen, the orchestra's longest-serving leader. Five years ago, Mr. Dudamel was unknown in this city—and most others. But in the summer of 2005 he made an electric American debut at the Hollywood Bowl, leading the Philharmonic in music of Tchaikovsky and Silvestre Revueltas. Intense interest in him followed, reaching a peak in April 2007 when he was named Mr. Salonen's successor. Dudamania has yet to subside.
Mr. Dudamel and his wife now rent a house in the Hollywood Hills, and he suggested that life here pleases him, praising Los Angeles's abundance of good food and drink and noting that the weather is similar to Venezuela's. Moreover, plenty of locals speak his native Spanish. But more important, he is taken with this city's appetite for artistic adventure. "I came for a concert of modern music," he said in his still-limited English, referring to attending one of the Philharmonic's new-music programs. "It was all modern music, and it was sold out. I was very impressed. This is a city of new traditions. People are really open to new things, and that is important."
Yet he also respects classical music's conservative canon—something that must come as a relief to Philharmonic patrons who considered Mr. Salonen an uncompromising avant-gardist. Mr. Dudamel maintains that his programs will balance old and new. "It's not difficult when you have good music," he said. "On this tour, we will do Mahler's Symphony No. 1 with John Adams's 'City Noir.' Next year we have a Brahms festival, and all the symphonies will be paired with new music, including two world premieres—so it's Brahms, but with new and amazing composers. It's like when you go to eat and try a new dish: You always have it with something you already know. That's the kind of combination I want."
This view has already been reflected in the handful of programs Mr. Dudamel led this season. In November, for example, he conducted vibrant, evocative accounts of two scores by the 20th-century Italian composer Luciano Berio that used older material as inspiration. But on the same program he directed a comparatively wan account of Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony—especially compared with versions I heard this season from David Robertson and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic. And on a bill not long after, he sandwiched a dull and diffuse reading of Alban Berg's impassioned Violin Concerto, with Gil Shaham as soloist, between sprightly readings of Mozart's "Prague" and "Jupiter" Symphonies.
So the results are mixed. The performances are often thrilling, as with a roof-rattling Verdi Requiem last fall or last month's by turns haunting and snappy take on Bernstein's "Age of Anxiety Symphony" (featured on the coming tour). Yet sometimes his performances are less consistently rewarding than his myriad boosters would have it.
The conductor has only praise for his predecessor, Mr. Salonen, who backed him for the job he now holds. But that doesn't mean the Philharmonic's sound will go unchanged. "I arrived to a wonderful orchestra," Mr. Dudamel said. "The fact that they were 17 years with one conductor made a stability in the orchestra. They were having this connection with Esa-Pekka, and he left it in an amazing condition. But we don't have the same way to interpret, or ideas about repertoire. We are now working really deeply on the sound, and it's a different point of view. They already have their amazing sound, but we have to combine energies. And to describe that is difficult. Lighter? Heavier? More sunny? More dark? I don't know. It's more the personality; we are building a personality."
Mr. Dudamel is now in his third season as principal conductor of Sweden's Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and he remains artistic director of Venezuela's esteemed Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, a title he acquired at age 19. So his relative youth is not an issue. "Of course, I don't have the knowledge and the experience of a 60- or 70-year-old conductor," he said. "But I have been conducting for 17 years, starting at 12. When I see the development of my life, I can see that every day has been a new step forward. I'm always crazy to learn. In 10 years I will have more experience and in 20 even more—if God give me life. So I'm not worried about that. When you are focused on the things you want, and you study, and you are open to listening, all of the experience is coming naturally."
If Mr. Dudamel appears unflappable, that's because he is. Even mention of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's repressive president, does not faze him, though he quickly steers the conversation toward El Sistema, his country's vaunted and longstanding music-education program for underprivileged youths, from which he himself sprung. "For me to talk about politics is really impossible," the conductor said. "But it's very important to understand that I'm coming from this wonderful program of music, and through music we are building a better country. I'm very proud of my country. . . . As an artist, the main thing is to unify, to stand on the stage and play music for everybody."
Mr. Mermelstein writes for the Journal on classical music and film.
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