Musicon / Classical Music / Musical education / Classical music is not about Beethoven – it’s about us!
-Classical music is not about Beethoven – it’s about us!
In September, Alan Gilbert took over the New York Philharmonic in a concert broadcast on the PBS “Live From Lincoln Center” series. This week, Gustavo Dudamel led the Los Angeles Philharmonic in his first “official” concert, broadcast on the PBS series Great Performances.” The results couldn’t be more different. The two conductors represent two diametrically opposed schools of thought on music. And the future of classical music in America may hang in the balance.
While Dudamel and his orchestra showed why classical music matters, Gilbert and his showed why audiences are dwindling. Dudamel gave us one of the great Mahler Firsts, detailed, driven, fresh, as if it were the world premiere. In contrast, Gilbert gave a competent but ultimately dull reading of Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique.” Nothing was out of place, but, as LA critic Mark Swed wrote, “Mostly the ‘Symphonie Fantastique’ moved along without unusual incident.” You can’t make an ultimate judgment on the basis of two single concerts, but I have heard both conductors live and I attended Gilbert’s rehearsal of the Beethoven “Eroica” at Avery Fisher Hall. I have heard recordings by both. The impression left by the TV concerts is only reinforced.
Certainly, you can’t manufacture what Dudamel has: charisma and excitement. He is a once-in-a-generation phenomenon. Like Leonard Bernstein before him, he seems to be channeling music through the very fiber of his being. Gilbert lacks that and substitutes sobriety, which some listeners may take for depth. But there is something essentially different in their approaches to music. Gilbert says he is honoring the “intentions of the composer,” and does so by making sure that when the composer wrote an E-flat, his orchestra plays an E-flat. His “Eroica” rehearsal was all about text: what was written in Beethoven’s score. He never said anything about what the symphony means. There is a contingency that prefers such an approach, feeling uncomfortable with the messy human emotions involved.
But that is only a shallow sense of a composer’s intentions. Dudamel understands that it is the composer’s intention to excite and thrill his listener. Punctiliousness is a poor substitute for amazement. Dudamel excites not only his audience but also his musicians, who play for him like demons. That is true of the LA Phil, but it is also true of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra he led for years in Venezuela as part of El Sistema, the music-education program that trains impoverished Venezuelan youths to play music. It was even true for the grizzled old veterans of the Israel Philharmonic when the normally staid ensemble played the Tchaikovsky Fourth at Carnegie Hall last fall with Gustavo leading them into a frenzy of Tchaikovskitude. They not only played like enthusiastic kids, they gave their conductor a standing O at the end. Their love for each other was palpable. The truth is that classical music, when played right, is vital, exciting and tells us something about our own lives and emotions. It isn’t about Beethoven; it’s about us.
By Richard Nilsen, The Arizona Republic; excerpts, edited by MUSICON
Finale of Mahler’s 3rd Symphony – Dudamel: