Tuesday 2 April 2013

Gustavo Dudamel
At home in the East

Vivier: Zipangu
Debussy: La Mer
Stravinsky: The Firebird (complete ballet)

Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra

Gustavo Dudamel conductor

Barbican Hall, London, 17 March 2013
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Gustavo Dudamel is of course one of the most glamorous conductors on the circuit today.  As is well known, he was a product of El Sistema - Venezuela's famed music academy which teaches underprivileged children musical instruments and oversees over 100 youth orchestras - and graduated to direct its flagship orchestra: The Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra.  He now also leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra where he was greeted with street posters shouting "Dudamel pasion".  It was this ensemble that he brought to London for a weekend residency, fronting it with an attractively unassuming stage manner. All music played was from the 20th and 21st centuries and it was in the most recent music that the biggest treasures were to be obtained from this conductor and ensemble.

The Sunday night programme was heavily weighted towards the early 20th century with masterworks of Debussy (La Mer) and Stravinsky (The Firebird).  These were delivered with the massive technical assurance which we have come to expect from this and other leading American orchestras.  But real orchestral magic was in short supply despite these scores providing abundant opportunities to conjure it up.  Dudamel seemed intent on clean, literal readings although the direct and fearless dispatch of Kastchei's infernal dance had some audience members spontaneously applauding.  Could Kastchei be the new March from Tchaikovsky's 6th in its ability to mislead listeners of the true ending? 
However Dudamel's more directional interventions could be electrifying.  No better demonstration of his obvious talent was in evidence than a mesmerising pianissimo transition into the final climax of the ballet.

Real musical intensity was delivered at the start with a work of Claude Vivier from 1980: Zipangu. Canadian composer Vivier's life was cruelly cut short when he was murdered in Paris in 1983. His ritualistic and colourful music was deeply influenced by extensive travel in Asia.  One of the countries he visited was Japan, and Zipangu was the name given to Japan at the time of Marco Polo.  

Claude Vivier, before his fateful visit to Paris
Igor Stravinsky, before he moved from Paris to Los Angeles
At the Barbican, the combination of excellent rehearsal, assurance and a strongly projected reading of the score provided the ideal kind of super-committed reading. "New" music deserves this treatment but does not always receive.  Through contrasting "typical" classical structures and more free forms suggestive of the natural world (bird calls on violins, the hum of forest life) the music skilfully created a strong sense of a culture clash between Europeans and the Japanese world.  The climax of sorts was a solo on the double bass - of all instruments - which pushed it outside its comfort zone, again enhancing the sense of a culture at its limits.

So, an eerie and memorable experience.  Not until that transition at the end of Firebird did this concert again deliver something so powerful.