Dudamel;G-Los Angels Phil Inau

I watched this performance October 21, 2009 over KCET, the local PBS station, and found the video and audio both excellent. Well .... maybe the audio will be a little better balanced when the DVD is released. (Having played in an orchestra, I have my own ideas of how recordings should sound.)

The first work was John Adams' "City Noir", a very complex work which is very difficult to play, and probably quite foreign to most people's musical experience. The orchestra was up to the challenge, and Dudamel had certainly mastered the score. Don't expect to fall in love with this piece the first time you hear it! However, repeated hearings should reveal more and more of the inner voices, and I look forward to hearing it again.

The second work was Gustave Mahler's Symphony #1, for which Dudamel has a special affinity and love. Any Mahler lover (yes, I'm one) will have heard many different performances already. This one is unusual -- it is over the top. Dudamel brings some new insights, and stirs the orchestra to a fever pitch at the right moments. And he's not afraid of slow tempos when they're appropriate. This is a very exciting performance, and in my opinion, true to Mahler's intentions. I place it second to none -- it's at the top of the heap of recorded performances for this masterpiece. I just hope he records the other Mahler works on DVD!

On the basis of this one evening of watching him and listening to the results, I placed orders on Amazon for several other DVDs with Dudamel conducting. I don't think he's a flash in the pan. I believe he will be one of the great conductors of the 21st century, and I feel fortunate to live in LA, where I'll be able to see him and the orchestra live.

I've just seen and heard via local public TV (PBS: Great Performances) the Mahler First Symphony in D Major played by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of their new music director, Gustavo Dudamel, in his inaugural concert. Clearly, the Philharmonic saw this as an historic event: it chose to perform the Mahler Symphony in the 100th anniversary year of its first US performance (December 1909, New York Philharmonic, Mahler conducting). For me, however, there was a bit of skepticism. Having heard some hyperventilated ballyhoo about Mr. Dudamel and having also read a few less favorable assessments of his orchestral leadership, I began listening with the queasy feeling I was about to be let down.

It wasn't long, though, before I was quite deeply under the spell woven by Mahler, the Phil, and Mr. Dudamel. As time went on I became ever more impressed with the whole musical experience. To be sure, it wasn't the easiest show to put on. Mahler was a composer of more than usual complexity and rife with internal conflicts, such that even the most seasoned interpreter might very well go astray. How then should such a young conductor (28), still new to his orchestra, pull off this demanding feat? And yet he did, I believe, from the opening pseudo-pastorale, through the scherzo-cum-ländler and the mock funeral march, and on to the powerful finale wherein the whole French horn section--obedient to Mahler's instruction--stood up to blare out their triumphal message. (I counted only five of the seven horns the score calls for; perhaps two were offstage.)

With Mahler, it turns out, nothing is quite what it seems to be. Even the cuckoo in the first movement gets his notes wrong, singing a fourth instead of a third, and in a most insistent way. The second movement, called a scherzo, seems at times to be almost a typical Austrian ländler (country dance)--but with a less-than-dancelike trio. The "funeral march" seems to begin with some solemnity, but its tune is a children's round (Bruder Martin) soon offset with klezmerlike popular dance motifs. Not until the last part of the last movement do all these centrifugal elements become subsumed in a grand reconciliation in the original D Major tonality not heard since the beginning. The beauty, lushness, and exquisite polish of Mahler's music are traps for the unwary, the sublime masking the ridiculous. Not until Shostakovich does such a brilliant symphonic satirist and parodist appear again, I suspect.

Mr. Dudamel, born to musical parents in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, on January 26, 1981, got an early start in "the system," through which young Venezuelans--otherwise perhaps tempted into less savory pastimes--are given musical instruction and thus inducted into constructive activities in wholesome social groups. Dudamel joined one such group--the Simón Bolívar Youth Symphony Orchestra--as a violinist and became its conductor at age 18). Later he conducted that orchestra in a performance of Mahler's Fifth Symphony now available as a CD on this website. In 2004 he won the Mahler Conducting Competition in Germany, which accompanies a good number of other honors and awards to his credit.

Dudamel seems to have good rapport with the LA Phil: he treats the players--several greatly his senior--with respect and appreciation, and they seem to respond in the same terms. His joy and enthusiasm for music-making seem to be contagious, widely infecting the talented players of the Phil, who outdid themselves in brilliance and polish throughout this inaugural performance, which Dudamel conducted without a score, but with confidence, conviction, sensitivity, and dynamism.

The resulting performance was surely a success for all. I found it fully enjoyable, interesting, exciting, and musically satisfying, with nothing noticeably amiss or lacking. Indeed, I don't believe I've ever heard the Mahler First sounding so fresh and coherent before. Hooray!

It looks like the beginning of a beautiful relationship between Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic, one which will bless music-lovers not only in the City of Angels, but everywhere!

I recommend the Mahler First with enthusiasm. (Not having heard the other items in this concert, I'll have to remain tacit on them.)

A note to L. Crist and a thank you for his insights. I am a double bassist and also teach the instrument. So I can share your point of view. I am also a Mahler addict. The performance was electrifying, and this young man brought out portions of the Mahler 1 that I didn't even know where there. As often as I've heard this symphony, the young maestro's approach was so intense, so passionate, and so obviously carefully studied that it was as if I were hearing this masterpiece for the first time. I also agree that the sound engineering at the time of live recording leaves much to be desired, and I hope that over the next 2 months before the DVD is released (I've already gotten my name in for a copy) an "orchestra savvy" engineer will take over the controls.

Are we looking at a future Bernstein?

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