Is Dudamel a genius? Only time will tell
The young Venezuelan conductor has created a lot of sound and fury -
on the stage and off - but I wasn't exactly overwhelmed when I saw
him in Lucerne
September 4, 2008 8:30 AM

Hair-raising ... Gustavo Dudamel at Avery Fisher Hall in New York
last year. Photograph: Chris Lee/AP

At last. Years after everybody else, and three weeks since he created
such an impression at the Edinburgh festival and the Proms, I have
finally seen the Gustavo Dudamel phenomenon in the flesh, on the
latest instalment of his two-orchestra European tour. He was with the
Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra here at the Lucerne festival, playing
Ravel's La Valse (with which he also started his UK programmes with
the Gothenburg Symphony), Strauss's Oboe Concerto and
Mussorgsky/Ravel's Pictures at an Exhibition.

Now, everyone is allowed an off night, and I know he was flying to
Berlin immediately after the gig, so maybe his mind wasn't totally on
the job, but from both conductor and orchestra, this was never more
than middle-ranking music-making. The end of La Valse was the nadir
of the concert. Dudamel's bouncy enthusiasm became a flailing
windmill in an attempt to make the more than 150 players of the Simon
Bolivar orchestra accelerate with him to the end of the piece; but it
was impossible for them to follow the wildness of his gestures, and
he finished the work a full bar before they did. The result was a
desultory smattering of applause immediately afterwards, as if no one
was quite sure what had happened.

Accidents happen, however, and even this moment of orchestral a-
synchronicity wouldn't have mattered were it not for the crude
musical decisions Dudamel took in the rest of La Valse. Ravel's
carefully constructed portrait of the birth and death of a genre -
and with it, his dramatisation of the end of empire, the most
expressionistic music he ever wrote - was turned into a hollow
orchestral showpiece, with Dudamel's gratuitous pulling about of
tempo. The result was a travesty of the terrifying effect that La
Valse could and should have in the concert hall. The same was true of
Pictures at an Exhibition, which was by turns very fast and v-e-r-y s-
l-o-w and VERY LOUD. It was, however, together.

Yet it was the encores - Dudamel's hair! Beautiful young Venezuelans
twirling string instruments! Musicians shouting "Mambo!" - that
everyone was waiting for. And although there was a lot of sound and
fury and 'fun' on stage, I noticed a few bored viola players, and
there was something forced about the South American jollity they were
dutifully performing to a delighted Swiss public.

But I feel sorry both for Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth
Orchestra. It must be so easy for them to believe their hype: that
they represent, individually and collectively, the supposed salvation
of classical music. And they must, surely, be tired of all the
encores and the endless European hotel rooms they've been in and out
of in recent seasons. On the evidence of this Swiss concert, they are
a respectable youth orchestra, but not in the same class as the
Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra or the European Community Youth
Orchestra, and Dudamel's hyperactive conducting style seemed, in
Lucerne, like a smokescreen for a lack of real engagement with the
core repertoire. There was a complacency about the orchestra's
playing, and a sense that Dudamel could let his hair down with these
players, allowing him to indulge in some ill-disciplined conducting.

Added to which is the unthinking association of the Simon Bolivar
orchestra with the regime in Venezuela. There were cries of "Viva
Chavez!" as the players left the hall, to which nobody in Lucerne
batted an eyelid. (Imagine if the St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra
were greeted with cries of "Viva Putin!" - although Valery Gergiev
might not avoid such associations of music and nationalism.) On An
Overgrown Path has a useful and lively digest of the issues
surrounding El Sistema and Venezuelan politics and music. El Sistema
itself, of which the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra is the flagship,
pre-dates Chavez (it was set up over 30 years ago).

Dudamel and his players are now part of bigger political and musical
pictures: Dudamel as the ne plus ultra of potential cash cows for
agents and promoters as the latest and hottest young property (he's
27, barely a beginner in conducting terms, but takes up his job as
music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic next year), the
players as representatives of their entire culture, not simply a
youth orchestra like any other. Now though, the time has come for the
orchestra, and for Dudamel, to prove themselves musically, not just
as a flashy phenomenon. That's a test that will take decades, not
years, to pass.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/09/is_dudamel_a_genius_only_tim
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