{"id":10613,"date":"2013-04-04T16:24:29","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T20:24:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=10613"},"modified":"2013-04-21T14:39:34","modified_gmt":"2013-04-21T18:39:34","slug":"dudamel%e2%80%99s-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=10613","title":{"rendered":"Dudamel\u2019s Development"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Sedgwick Clark<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic \u2013 America\u2019s hottest orchestra\/conductor team \u2013 breezed through New York last week for a pair of sold-out concerts they had just performed in LA, London, Lucerne, and Paris. Dudamel is a bona fide star. Now 32, he draws a younger-than-usual audience, and cheers erupted when he walked to the podium. But nothing in his demeanor indicates that this acclaim has gone to his head; he even appears bashful about it. True to his El Sistema upbringing, his commitment to music education is unwavering, and nothing in the American publicity mill will deter it. His conducting style is understated, with minimal gestures, and when the performance ends he walks through the orchestra to single out important soloists and entire choirs. He\u2019s one of the gang, and he respects each and every one of them. He\u2019s got the goods, and what\u2019s happening on that other coast should be followed with great interest by the faltering music business.<\/p>\n

He loves contemporary and 20th-century music, and all the works he conducted in New York fit that bill. Indeed, the first of the Lincoln Center concerts (3\/27) was the local premiere of a single, extraordinarily ambitious work: John Adams\u2019s oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary <\/em>(2011-12). Many consider Adams a great composer, an opinion I wish I could share. His new work, lasting over two and a half hours, stretched the limits of boredom as few performances I can recall \u2013 not since Carlo Maria Giulini led this same orchestra in a full-hour, headache-inducing distention of Beethoven\u2019s Eroica <\/em>at Carnegie Hall 34 years ago.<\/p>\n

For fuller, more gentlemanly analyses of the Other Mary<\/em>, read George Loomis\u2019s report <\/strong>(3\/29) <\/strong>on the Musical America<\/em> Web site and Anthony Tommasini\u2019s in the Times <\/em>(3\/30). But even they were quite mixed over the sprawling structure of librettist and director Peter Sellars\u2019s amalgam of poetry. Sellars is a brilliant thinker and talker, as he demonstrated once again in a pre-concert discussion, but noble ideas do not a viable libretto make, as this team so excruciatingly demonstrated with the opera Doctor Atomic<\/em>. However, my concern here is about the musical<\/em> element of the piece, not the political or religious matters \u2013 or Sellars\u2019s distracting staging \u2013 that upset some of the reviewers I googled. I simply was not emotionally engaged by the way Adams arranged the notes.<\/p>\n

The score is structured in two parts. The first part is the longest, and except for a couple of brief Orffisms I waited in vain for memorable melodic inspiration. The second half seemed to acquire a more angular rhythmic profile, perhaps because the deadline was encroaching and the motoric wisps of Stravinsky, Orff, and even Jan\u00e1\u010dek that dot Adams\u2019s earlier works asserted themselves more readily. (Tommasini heard \u201crecognizeable inspirations, like big-band jazz, Bach, Copland, Ives, Ravel and more . . . .\u201d) Whatever the case, Dudamel and the Angelinos acquitted themselves brilliantly as far as I could tell, and Deutsche Grammophon recorded the work in March.<\/p>\n

Dudamel\u2019s second concert (3\/28) began with an\u00a0ugly\u00a0piece called Zipangu <\/em>(1980), by Canadian composer Claude Vivier. According to the program book, Vivier’s\u00a0\u201cown style synthesized many characteristics of Debussy\u2019s and Stravinsky\u2019s music.\u201d Nonsense.<\/p>\n

The real music ensued with a rather soggy rendition of Debussy\u2019s La Mer <\/em>and a detailed and expressive (or, if one didn\u2019t like it, slow and meandering) performance of Stravinsky\u2019s complete Firebird <\/em>(1910). While I prefer the greater intensity and drama of the composer\u2019s recorded performance, which is tighter by five minutes, there were plenty of gorgeous moments to savor throughout the score in Dudamel\u2019s conception, from the lovely \u201cRound dance of the princesses\u201d to the exciting \u201cInfernal dance of Kastchei\u2019s subjects,\u201d which provoked applause at its wild conclusion.<\/p>\n

An interesting detail: Stravinsky added two snarling trombone glissandi near the end of the Infernal dance in his 1919 Suite, which is the way the Firebird <\/em>music is most often performed, and he retained it in his longer 1945 Suite. Neither the complete 1910 ballet music nor the 1910 Suite versions include the glissandi, but Dudamel added them (as well as, he told me later, other scoring details from the 1919 version that I didn\u2019t notice), and they fit just fine. Why didn\u2019t anyone else \u2013 including the composer himself ex post facto <\/em>\u2013 think of this?<\/p>\n

Looking Forward<\/strong><\/p>\n

My week\u2019s scheduled concerts (8:00 p.m. unless otherwise noted):<\/p>\n

4\/4 Carnegie Hall. Boston Symphony\/Daniele Gatti; Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo; Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Mahler: Symphony No. 3.<\/p>\n

4\/5 at 7:00. Metropolitan Museum. New York Philharmonic Contact Concert\/Alan Gilbert; Liang Wang, oboe. Unsuk Chin: Gougalon<\/em>. Poul Ruders: Oboe Concerto. Anders Hillborg: Vaporized Tivoli<\/em>. Yann Robin: Backdraft<\/em>.<\/p>\n

4\/8 at 7:30. Symphony Space. Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival. Loadbang; Kathy Supove, piano; Oleg Dubson, actor. Alexandre Lundsqui: Gutteral I and II<\/em>. Douglas Gibson: Fanfare for the Common Audience<\/em>. Reiko F\u00fcting: Land of Silence. <\/em>Andy Ahiko: LOVE LOST LUST LONE<\/em>. <\/em>Victoria Bond: The Page Turner<\/em>. Hanna Lash: Stoned Prince<\/em>.<\/p>\n

4\/11 at 7:30. Avery Fisher Hall. New York Philharmonic\/David Robertson; Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano. Messiaen: Les Offrandes oubli\u00e9es<\/em>. Mozart: Concerto No. 23. Tristan Murail: Le D\u00e9senchantement du monde<\/em>. Beethoven: Symphony No. 2.<\/p>\n