Dudamel's M1 (inaugural concert w/LA)

[waderice]

It will take some time for a comprehensive verdict to be made on Dudamel.  By "comprehensive", I mean that he will have to guest-conduct the big name orchestras in the US and in Europe, and then and only then can a decent assessment of him be made, both from orchestra players and the press at those venues.  One DVD of a Mahler symphony isn't enough to establish him as a significant name to be reckoned with.  I've seen him on YouTube, but from what I saw, I too, can't see what all the excitement is about.

One conductor I had high hopes for, who I saw a few years ago at the Washington National Symphony conducting the Tchaikovsky 6th was Mikko Franck, but as of late, I believe illness has sidelined him from his music making.  I subsequently purchased his recording of the work, which to most everyone here (including Barry) will sound incredibly slow, particularly the rousing scherzo movement.  More to topic, I downloaded Franck's Mahler 5th with the London Philharmonic from the OperaShare site, and it too, is slow as molasses.  But despite the slow tempi in both works, Franck exhibits incredible control, and that was visibly evident in the live Tchaikovsky 6th I saw him conduct.  He conducts from a chair, but when he wants to build climaxes and get the orchestra to do as he wants them to, he gradually rises from his chair, and that increases the attention level of his players.  His beat and conducting is only what is necessary to get the orchestra to do what he wants them to do, but not as minimal as a Reiner or Boehm.  Franck was supposed to come to Washington again this past June to conduct the Strauss Eine Alpensinfonie, but for some unknown reason, he was substituted by another conductor substituting Eine Alpensinfonie with Also sprach Zarathustra (again, illness?).

[franze]

Hello,
I do not post very often. But for once I have clear words to write.
In 2008 I was in Lucerne for Mahler 2 conducted by Dudamel and played by "his" orchestra. It was a public triumph and a very poor musical performance (disgusting...). Then,as scheduled, I went to Salzburg and I decided to sell my tickets for the Dudamel performance of Beethoven triple  (Argerich) and Mussorgsky's Pictures and, to shorten my stay in Salzburg, to sell also my tickets for the Berlin philharmonic performance under Rattle. The Lady at the Box office was very happy to get return tickets for Dudamel's concert ("It's already sold!!!") but she refused to take my returns tickets for the Berlin Philharmonic performance, even for free.
So is the new musical world seen from Salzburg.
Since, I avoid Dudamel and all the business around (after all business is the key word here, not music). 

[chris]

For those interested, the M1 audio is available as an iTunes exclusive - not sure if it will ever make it to CD (the other Dudamel/LA concerts didn't).

[sbugala]

I've watched most of the concert.  I found the second movement of the M1 a little too slow for my tastes, but overall, I liked the performance as a whole.  The toughie is I usually judge performances as video vs. video and recording vs. recording.  So, while it was nice, it doesn't displace any of my favorite audio only recordings.  It was much better than the Maazel M1 with NY a couple years back. 


I consider myself a huge John Adams fan. He's not only my favorite living composer, but one of my favorite composers...period. However, despite some nice moments, City Noir didn't do much for me.  At his best, you can feel a symphonic scope in most of his large scale orchestral works. But this was more intellectually satisfying than emotionally satisfying. I could appreciate that Adams was tipping his hat to Hollywood composers, jazz, and pulp fiction, but there wasn't much else there besides homage. Bummer. I may try another sit-through, but we'll see.

[Fafner]

An old topic I just noticed...I was there at Lucerne too, and I fully agree with what you say: Dudamel's architectural grasp was equal to 0. The concert was a triumph, yeah (public-wise...critics were softer), but judging from what I saw before and after the concert, a good part of the public wasn't from Lucerne or even from Switzerland (other said...there were many, many ppl from Venentuela and they weren't a silent public for sure). Hagmann in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung perfectly reported how the concert was and how the current Dudamel situation is.
As for Dudamel, so far he always failed to particularly impress me...he seems busier trying to look brilliant at all costs on everything he conducts (last year's La Valse was so vulgar sounding to reach ridicolousness) at the expense of everything else, something which can work on some music (the Alpine Symphony he just performed at Lucerne wasn't that bad) but not on a Mahler Symphony or pretty much on everything which reuires some depth...I wonder how long this is going to be enough for him to be successful.
L'll give him another chance this year with Dvorak's 9th with the Wiener Philharmoniker, but I'm not expecting miracles. My guess is that these will come with Mahler'9th from Abbado, but let's see...

Hello,
I do not post very often. But for once I have clear words to write.
In 2008 I was in Lucerne for Mahler 2 conducted by Dudamel and played by "his" orchestra. It was a public triumph and a very poor musical performance (disgusting...). Then,as scheduled, I went to Salzburg and I decided to sell my tickets for the Dudamel performance of Beethoven triple  (Argerich) and Mussorgsky's Pictures and, to shorten my stay in Salzburg, to sell also my tickets for the Berlin philharmonic performance under Rattle. The Lady at the Box office was very happy to get return tickets for Dudamel's concert ("It's already sold!!!") but she refused to take my returns tickets for the Berlin Philharmonic performance, even for free.
So is the new musical world seen from Salzburg.
Since, I avoid Dudamel and all the business around (after all business is the key word here, not music).  

[barry guerrero]

He's going to need time to season, and maybe that'll happen. Right now, he's young, energetic, and probably not in full control of his over-wrought emotions (I should talk). My main complaint with the inaugural concert wasn't so much with the Mahler first - which wasn't the greatest, but not bad either - but with the over-long piece of junk composed by John Adams, disguised as film noir music (which it ain't), and supposedly an hommage to the less noble traits of a huge metropolitan area. Hmmmmm.

[etucker82]

Perhaps not surprisingly, I thought City Noir was quite a good piece if overlong.  But John Adams fans won't call people who disagree with them nutty for disagreeing. 

[barry guerrero]

I won't say that "City Noir" was a terrible piece. I think it could benefit the work to cut it down to just the third movement - easily the most exciting of the three. It has none of the melodic profile that the scores to the old film noirs had. I'm not suggesting that Adams was trying to copy Waxman, Steiner, Hermann, or any of the other classic Hollywood film composers. But without some thematic marker along the way, it just sounds like a long exercise in orchestration. In fact, in many of the noirs, themes are used almost like Wagnerian leitmotifs. I frankly hear more concentration and organization in the series of "Notations" by Boulez. Willfully naive, I suppose