Gustavo Dudamel conducts the New York Philharmonic in March 2022. Chris Lee
Gustavo Dudamel inaugurated his collaboration with the New York Philharmonic this Friday, in the first concert he has conducted since announcing his appointment as Music and Artistic Director of the orchestra in February. Although the Venezuelan musician won’t join until 2026 and tonight was by no means his New York debut, the aperitif set a good example of what to expect for musicians and audiences in this future phase: an absolute community.
With a moving Ninth Symphony by Gustav Mahler, Dudamel earned more than four minutes of standing ovations, but also some tears in his intimate interpretation of the last movement, the moving Adagio. The Philharmoniker’s version was so special that when the last note sounded, the floor remained completely still while Dudamel, in a memory spanning seconds that seemed to last forever, processed the emotions emanating from this musical and vital testament of the Viennese musician . The Ninth is his last complete symphony, one of the last three major works he composed, and the Adagio, a farewell to the world.
The choice of the piece for the official performance in New York was not free either: between 1909 and 1911 Gustav Mahler was also musical director of the already ailing orchestra. As Dudamel himself recalled in February at his official introduction as conductor of the orchestra, The Philharmonic, conducting an orchestra conducted by composers such as Mahler, Toscanini or Bernstein and many others, is a dream come true. “To be in such an iconic place with such an impressive past.”
This Friday is the first of three weekend concerts with the same program for which all tickets were sold out weeks ago. The anticipation was high, as was the ovation that dismissed the orchestra and conductor, although the Ninth is not an easy piece. Neither the Ninth nor any other, as Mahler himself warned: “A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything. As the Adagio de la Novena descends into the deepest stillness, including Dudamel’s stillness, it seems to contain more.
The Venezuelan conductor, who often jokes that he is no longer a young hopeful – he is 42 – showed a surprising maturity before Mahler’s composition was overshadowed with a demanding first movement, the enormous tonal challenge of the third movement and that proverbial celebrity through the Adaggieto of the Fifth Symphony, thanks to the film Death in Venice, but much more profound – that left Dudamel transfixed and the audience mute and not in danger of applauding (a very surprising gesture given the expressiveness of New York). audience applauding each aria in opera). The Ninth Symphony featured a mature Dudamel, energetic and elegant, delicate, no longer as exuberant as before, as if Mahler’s Central European depth and distant legacy at the head of the Philharmonie had settled on his shoulders, blessing him with the halo of genius The sprawling and Caribbean Dudamel then reappeared as the greeting, with the same smile as the boy from Barquisimeto who dreamed of leading an orchestra one day.
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