Bienvenido Gustavo! Dudamel's electrifying inaugural season as LA Philharmonic's Music Director

Bienvenido Gustavo! Dudamel's inaugural season

BIENVENIDO, GUSTAVO!

Los Angeles has never welcomed a Music Director of its flagship orchestra in quite the same way. Indeed, there has not been a welcome quite like this in recent memory for a conductor of classical music. But then, GUSTAVO DUDAMEL is not your typical conductor, and everyone who has seen him conduct and experienced his music, including today's most eminent conductors, says without pre-condition that he is very special. It is often heard today that not since Leonard Bernstein has a young conductor generated so much excitement. And not just in the rarefied world of classical music.

LISTEN to ESA-PEKKA SALONEN introduce his successor and to a comment by popular composer QUINCY JONES.

So, when the phenomenon from Venezuela officially arrived as LA Phil's Music Director, it was as if all of the city came to welcome him at the BIENVENIDO GUSTAVO! concert at the Hollywood Bowl.

LISTEN to comments by obviously thrilled MEMBERS OF THE AUDIENCE.

Have you ever been to the Bowl when even the sky-highest seat was taken? Perhaps, some say, not since the Rolling Stones rolled into town in 2005 after an absence of 40 years. That was for rock music, though. But for Beethoven? You better believe it - this time, people aged 8 to 80, more than 18,000 of them, came to rock to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony - and not just the by-now-almost-too-familiar "Ode to Joy" but the complete work, which was the highlight and finale of the celebration. Earlier, the 4-hour program showcased a host of other artists --from local ensembles to rising stars and established names--and a variety of musical genres reflectingLA's wide cultural diversity. It was quite a welcome celebration, the first of its kind. But more than that, it was an authentic community lovefest that, one would hope, gained for classical music in "la-la land" a new and younger audience, a firmer foothold, and a promising future. LEARN MORE about the concert.

Klieg lights and hot pink-carpet hoopla surrounded the Latin-themed celebration that followed the October 8 inaugural gala concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall, attended of course by Hollywood celebrities and the city's glitzerati. It was simulcast free on an outdoor plasma screen at the Music Center Plaza across the street - another "first" in LA Phil/Music Center history - where a couple of thousand "Dudamaniacs" had gathered hours earlier, staking their claims to the spaces that had been distributed by online lottery. And it was recorded for delayed broadcast on PBS' "Great Performances" program series and for release on DVD, giving you and I no excuse to have missed seeing "The Dude" in action.

But what truly distinguished Dudamel's inaugural week from your usual gala event apart from the conspicuous absence of the almost obligatory superstar guest soloist was his bold inclusion of new works in the repertoire he chose to usher in his tenure as LA Phil's eleventh Music Director: two programs, each juxtaposing the magnificence of Mahler's First Symphony (Dudamel's first performance of the work with the orchestra) with the novelty of a freshly minted piece commissioned by LA Phil expressly for the occasion. Receiving its world premiere at the gala concert was John Adams' post-war LA-inspired "City Noir", a 30-minute jazz-influenced, cinematic symphony evocative of the dark mood of the era's "film noir." Exotic world music in the form of Korean-born, Berlin-resident and prize-winning composer Unsuk Chin's "Su", a concerto for sheng (a Chinese or Korean mouth organ) and orchestra shared center stage in the final two performances of inaugural week.

Which all goes to show that while steeped in the classical tradition and Mahler remarkably is a mainstay of his young conducting career, Dudamel has set no boundaries to his musical universe. This becomes even more evident as his debut season at Disney Hall with his new orchestra comes to a close in November 2009, a month which finds him conducting an awesome Verdi's Requiem, masterfully dabbling in the late Luciano Berio's works for orchestra ("Rendering") as well as for soprano (performed by the inimitable Dawn Upshaw) and small ensemble ("Folk Songs"), fleshing out and imparting his own grand finishing touches to Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony," directing Alban Berg's elegiac "Violin Concerto" (performed by the virtuoso Gil Shaham) between Mozart's "Prague" and "Jupiter" symphonies (Yes, Dude skeptics! he can tackle Mozart's delicate details as well as Mahler's grand gestures), and immersing himself in the music of California's contemporary composers (Salonen, Harrison, and Adams) as he kicks off "West Coast, Left Coast" - the first festival of his tenure, curated by his first Creative Chair appointee John Adams. Indeed, with a dynamo at the helm of the LA Phil, the City of Angels is in for some musically exciting times!

"Mahler: Symphony No. 5" with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela was a FanFaire-DGG CD GIveaway. BUY MAHLER 5 CD / OR DOWNLOAD MP3.

Credit: Images and video clip - LA Phil

SUPER CONDUCTOR SIMON BOLIVAR YOUTH ORCHESTRA MAHLER 5th ON 60 MINUTES - Videos

EL SISTEMA according to: THE FOUNDER THE ADVOCATES THE BENEFICIARIES