FanFaire celebrates Gustavo Dudamel

SUPERCONDUCTOR (one word) - a material that conducts electricity (or energy, if you will) without resistance; a 20th century discovery with the potential for awesome real-life applications, scientifically referred to as a macroscopic quantum phenonenon.

SUPER CONDUCTOR (two words) - a usually tuxedoed person standing center stage on a podium (or in the pit) with his back to the audience who generates electricity without resistance throughout the concert hall (or opera house) as he coaxes waves upon waves of inspired music from similarly attired musicians seated before him, while wielding a wand with the right hand and making cryptic motions with the left; musically acclaimed as a PHENOMENON.

Today, the phenomenon is named GUSTAVO DUDAMEL. Only 26 years old, he hails from neither Europe nor North America where fabled conductors usually come from, but from Barquisimeto - a second-tier city in west central Venezuela, some 200 miles away from the capital city of Caracas. By the time he turns 27, he will have conducted many of the world's great orchestras, generating electricity without resistance, in most all of the world's great concert halls. No small wonder that this phenomenon has also been labelled a MIRACLE!

And a miracle is what one hears while listening to Dudamel's latest recording - of Mahler's Symphony No.5 (!), his second on the Deutsche Grammophon label, yet again with his beloved all-Venezuelan SIMON BOLIVAR YOUTH ORCHESTRA, comprised of even younger musicians. Mahler's 5th is a formidable undertaking for any orchestra, yet Dudamel and his ensemble of more than 150 players (aged 12 to 25) deliver with beauty of sound, powerful intensity and a musical maturity one would expect only of revered orchestras. One is right to be awed, just listening to the CD in the solitutde of one's living room.

But to see and hear the phenomenon in a concert hall is to be totally convinced of his gift and charisma; to witness "a conducting animal" in action - LA Philharmonic Music Director ESA-PEKKA SALONEN's visceral description of the "kid from Venezuela" on first seeing Dudamel conduct at the Mahler competition in Bamberg where he emerged the clear-cut winner; and to experience the amazement that Berlin Philharmonic Music Director Sir SIMON RATTLE - a leading advocate of Dudamel and his Youth Orchestra, and predecessor in the pedigreed line of classical music's "enfant-terribles" - felt when he proclaimed Dudamel "the most astonishingly gifted young conductor I have ever come across!" It is a reputation that precedes Dudamel's concert appearances.

SUPER CONDUCTING in LA

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No small wonder then that "GUSTAVO DUDAMEL and the SIMON BOLIVAR YOUTH ORCHESTRA OF VENEZUELA" at Walt Disney Concert Hall November 1 and 2 (2007) became the hottest tickets in Los Angeles in years, if not in memory. If ticket scalping for concerts of Mahler and Beethoven was unimaginable in hip-hopping, salsa-dancing LA, well, it no longer is. It happened when Dudamel and his team came to town (it was next to impossible to get tickets weeks before the event) and swept the audience off their feet, with a program only they could get away with.

They partnered two giant symphonic works of the Germanic repertoire - MAHLER's 5th (in the second half on the first night) and Beethoven's 5th (in the first half on the second night), both conducted from memory and played with the requisite solemnity, perhaps not to perfection, but certainly with the skill, passion, and vitality of older, seasoned world-class players, with modern populist works (excerpts from Bernstein's West Side Story on the first night, and home-grown Latin-American music on the second) - as if it was the most natural thing for a symphonic orchestra to do.

Electric sparks were in abundance as the orchestra added fire to the audience's feet and sent rhythmic pulses of mambo rippling down their bloodstream, dancing and twirling their instruments as they continued to make music... all the way to the encores that included a surprise appearance by the popular composer/conductor John Williams who was clearly enthused in leading the youngsters through an exhilarating rendition of his Star Wars music, and the rousing Venezuelan national anthem that concluded the concert. No one seemed to want to leave the hall, the audience clearly wanting more. Indeed, it was the first time in our concert-going memory that no one rushed for the exits at the end of the formal program - to hit the freeways and head home before the rest of the crowd, an understandable Southern California habit. Happily, they can all look forward to the day when they can have him to their hearts' content: in 2009 Los Angeles becomes one of Dudamel's artistic homes when the trail-blazing Esa-Pekka Salonen hands over the baton he will have wielded for 17 years to Dudamel as the new Music Director of the LA Philharmonic. One can say "Deja vu all over again!" The still youthful Salonen was but a kid of 33 from Finland when he took over the reins of the LA Phil and led the one of the youngest great orchestras in the world through its best and most exciting years. But this time, the ensemble will play (and dance?) to the beat of a Latin American super conductor. There can only be more exciting times ahead.

SO, IS CLASSICAL MUSIC DEAD?

Singing Dudamel's praises, Sir SIMON RATTLE is always quick to add without reservation, "If anyone asked me 'Where is there something really important going on now for the future of classical music?' I would simply have to say 'Here in Venezuela.'"* He is effectively saying that "Classical music is NOT dead!" (or dying), as many of us have been inclined to believe. And with the happy image of Dudamel as the energetic torch-bearer of the new generation, today leading young Venezuelans, en masse with violins in hand, out of the shadows of their barrios and inner cities, and tomorrow the esteemed members of the LA Philharmonic (and hopefully the youth of LA), one can with conviction, echoing Mark Twain: "Reports of classical music's demise are grossly exaggerated."
-JB/© FanFaire 2007

* Dudamel and every stripling member of his orchestra are, all of them, "products " of Venezuela'e El sistema, the country's massive national music education program founded by the venerable Maestro JOSE ANTONIO ABREU, who led the Venezuelan national anthem at the LA concert. Some children begin their musical life with El sistema as early as age two; Dudamel himself was recruited into the project when he was four years old. Interestingly El sistema's goal is not to produce exceptional professional musicians but to save children who otherwise might have been doomed to a life of poverty and crime. With more than 250,000 Venezuelan children on its roster, it is a program that has been adopted in most all of Latin America and which European and American orchestras have begun to emulate, with Berlin and Los Angeles, respectively, taking the lead.

CLICK HERE to join a FanFaire-DGG GIVEAWAY of the CD "Mahler: Symphony No. 5" with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela.

BUY MAHLER 5 CD / OR DOWNLOAD MP3.

The award-winning film by Alberto Alvero, Tocar y Luchar (To Play and To Fight), available on DVD, tells the phenomenal story of EL SISTEMA.

Credit: Images and video clip courtesy of and with permission of Deutsche Grammophon.

                                SUPER CONDUCTOR            SIMON BOLIVAR YOUTH ORCHESTRA            MAHLER 5th

                         EL SISTEMA according to:     THE FOUNDER                 THE ADVOCATES                    THE BENEFICIARIES