DUDAMEL! I love you so!

 

DUDAMEL! I am so glad to have found you! This is no small thing, to have found a conductor so skillful that he can actually find new nuances and freshness in what should be an old chestnut. This man, this genius, strips off all the old layers of varnish and restores the masterpiece so completely that the paint is still glistening wet. The instrumental virtuosity, particularly the flute and the bassoon, is excruciatingly pleasurable, but never overwhelms the whole, and Dudamel himself does not try to overwhelm the music with his personality. 

He has often been compared to Bernstein, but Bernstein became a "personality", a celebrity conductor people came to SEE as much as hear.  And yes, I did attend a Lenny concert when I was 13 years old, at the opening of Centennial Concert Hall in London, Ontario, in 1967.

Oh, it was a big deal in our house - we were seeing Lenny, the fabled Bernstein, the man we were kind of force-fed via those Young People's Concerts which we couldn't escape watching, and  which now seem - uh, er, how shall I put this? Utterly pretentious! He had a lah-dee-dah way of speaking that was actually cultivated (he wanted to sound classy, as if his parents really weren't just working class types) rather than cultured. And his attempts to be just one of the kids fell  flat, no matter how hard he tried to find value and "relevance" in pop music. 

But it WAS exciting to see him come out and do that flamboyant bow with his hair flopping down. The first piece was Mahler's 4th Symphony - I remember it now as the one with the jingle bells at the beginning. It's probably the most user-friendly of Mahler's blockbuster works, and that slow movement really was sublime, with Lenny bobbing and weaving and generally using his entire body to conduct.

Then there was intermission, in which we all oohed and ahhed that we had seen LENNY! Then came Debussy's La Mer, another opportunity for flamboyance. I am sure there was nothing wrong with his interpretation, except that the audience's attention seemed mostly focused on him. He was a rock star and he knew it, milked it. It detracted from the music, I now see, as most celebrities inevitably overwhelm their art forms.

And I remember the encore, the last movement of Charles Ives' first symphony, with a quote from Columbia the Jewel of the Ocean at the very end, followed by a massive, comical discord. Then, right on schedule, the audience jumped to its feet.

And the ovation went on and on. Len-NY! Len-NY! It was almost like some sort of sporting event ending in a  Clear and Magnificent Victory. He stood there, a beaming narcissist, soaking it all in. Applause was oxygen to him, and given how he smoked four packs a day and gasped out his last with emphysema, he needed it badly.  Finally, after several more bows, he pointed to his watch, made a "praying hands" gesture beside his face ("I have to sleep now, folks!") and strode out, as everyone cried for more.

Dudamel, well, I doubt I will ever get to see him in person, but just from  these superb YouTube videos of the nine Beethoven symphonies, I can tell that, dynamic and charismatic as the man is, he never overwhelms the music with his personality. He bows to it, he surrenders to it, he SERVES it, the way a true musician/magician must serve.

I have only listened to a fraction of his Beethoven Nine, partly because I often end up in tears, and some days I just don't have them to spare. But I have them stockpiled, and on days when I need to restore my soul, this music does it. .

Plus he's gorgeous, a poet with his  hands, graceful, but minus unnecessary theatrics. Not jumping up and down on the podium, not stomping his feet or roaring or doing any of those histrionic Lennyisms. It interests but doesn't surprise me that he is the youngest person ever to be named musical director of the New York  Philharmonic, Lenny's  old stomping ground. He wears these laurels lightly, having leaped up the levels of fame at an almost shockingly early age. But his leaps have been cat-like, no pole-vaulting as in Bernstein's case. In his mid-40s, he has already accomplished more than most conductors dream of in a lifetime.

So I am glad to have my music back, after a short detour, and glad that something good can come out of the much-maligned internet. I will never have to buy a CD again, and if I can't get to concerts, I have this. This magic, this music, this Dudamel.