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One perk of my San Francisco Symphony subscription is that I get one free ticket to a visiting orchestra concert of my choice. Usually I choose the earliest-scheduled concert whose program appeals to me, figuring I can pick up others later on. After I'd sent the order in, I at first had second thoughts: had I wasted my assured free ticket on something as obscure as the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, when something more renowned later in the season might be harder to get?
But then the Bolívar's conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, having gotten rave reviews all the way, was named the next music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, completing his rise to the position of the hottest young symphony conductor currently on the planet. There was even an article about him in the New York Times Magazine last week. So I became intensely curious about my first chance to hear his work live tonight.
Dudamel, who turned 26 this year (which makes him the same age as Britney Spears, if you want a measuring scale) did a fine conducting job, but the evening's story belonged to the orchestra. You can read in the NYT article if you want about the massive Venezuelan music education program and how this is their cream-of-the-crop ensemble. The Bolívar's strong, deep sound is due partly - though not entirely, because their solo players sound like this too - to sheer size. It has over twice the personnel of a normal orchestra, and almost everyone is on stage at once. The string section can actually drown out the brass, a thing that otherwise never happens, and when they all play a forte pizzicato note at once, nearby earthquake faults twinge in sympathetic vibration.
The program was organized like a pops concert: the biggest and most serious piece came first, with the atmosphere gradually lightening up from there. That first offering was Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony, which ranks pretty high on the big and serious scales. Dudamel led a broad, slow performance without skimping on the power, though he was a bit abrupt in changing gears. The orchestra is fully professional and needs no excuses, and the horns in particular were exquisite. But the challenges of the work did reveal some slight weaknesses: a tendency to overpunctuate climaxes, and a certain loss of line in lyrical passages.
They were more in their idiom in Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, and in what followed, which was listed in the program only as "Music from Latin America," and since it wasn't announced from the podium, I have no idea what it was. But there were three works. The first, a continuous dance suite, if not by Astor Piazzolla, certainly drew from the same vein as his suave Argentine romanticism. The second had a quiet, lyric slow movement, while its other three movements were raw, loud, and purely rhythmic, the whole sounding to my ears rather more Mexican. Then the players and conductor all put on jackets with a Venezuelan flag design, and played a brisk, popsy little piece that must have been Venezuelan. Judging from the audience's apparent familiarity with these works, and the number of Venezuelan flags raised around the hall at the end, the local Venezuelan expatriate community must have been out in force.
Then there were two encores, both of movements that had been played before, during which the musicians jumped up and down in their seats, twirled their instruments in the air, and even did The Wave. If Dudamel can persuade the L.A. Philharmonic to behave in this manner, I will be impressed.
But then the Bolívar's conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, having gotten rave reviews all the way, was named the next music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, completing his rise to the position of the hottest young symphony conductor currently on the planet. There was even an article about him in the New York Times Magazine last week. So I became intensely curious about my first chance to hear his work live tonight.
Dudamel, who turned 26 this year (which makes him the same age as Britney Spears, if you want a measuring scale) did a fine conducting job, but the evening's story belonged to the orchestra. You can read in the NYT article if you want about the massive Venezuelan music education program and how this is their cream-of-the-crop ensemble. The Bolívar's strong, deep sound is due partly - though not entirely, because their solo players sound like this too - to sheer size. It has over twice the personnel of a normal orchestra, and almost everyone is on stage at once. The string section can actually drown out the brass, a thing that otherwise never happens, and when they all play a forte pizzicato note at once, nearby earthquake faults twinge in sympathetic vibration.
The program was organized like a pops concert: the biggest and most serious piece came first, with the atmosphere gradually lightening up from there. That first offering was Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony, which ranks pretty high on the big and serious scales. Dudamel led a broad, slow performance without skimping on the power, though he was a bit abrupt in changing gears. The orchestra is fully professional and needs no excuses, and the horns in particular were exquisite. But the challenges of the work did reveal some slight weaknesses: a tendency to overpunctuate climaxes, and a certain loss of line in lyrical passages.
They were more in their idiom in Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, and in what followed, which was listed in the program only as "Music from Latin America," and since it wasn't announced from the podium, I have no idea what it was. But there were three works. The first, a continuous dance suite, if not by Astor Piazzolla, certainly drew from the same vein as his suave Argentine romanticism. The second had a quiet, lyric slow movement, while its other three movements were raw, loud, and purely rhythmic, the whole sounding to my ears rather more Mexican. Then the players and conductor all put on jackets with a Venezuelan flag design, and played a brisk, popsy little piece that must have been Venezuelan. Judging from the audience's apparent familiarity with these works, and the number of Venezuelan flags raised around the hall at the end, the local Venezuelan expatriate community must have been out in force.
Then there were two encores, both of movements that had been played before, during which the musicians jumped up and down in their seats, twirled their instruments in the air, and even did The Wave. If Dudamel can persuade the L.A. Philharmonic to behave in this manner, I will be impressed.
