NEW YORK — When Gustavo Dudamel first walked into the New York Philharmonic music director's office, he noticed black-and-white photos that included Leonard Bernstein, Gustav Mahler and Willem Mengelberg.
Ready to succeed them as music director on Sept. 1, he added the only color shot in the room: himself with his mentor, José Antonio Abreu.
Dudamel plans on a colorful tenure atop one of the world’s premiere podiums, realizing times have changed in the seven decades since Bernstein injected his energetic personality into the orchestra and audience.
“It’s very fast,” Dudamel said of contemporary culture during a Jan. 23 interview with The Associated Press. “We have social media, it is a different world. Everything is very ephemeral.”
Dudamel’s first season will have a triple opening, the orchestra announced Tuesday.
The 45-year-old Venezuelan begins as music director with a performance at 6,000-capacity Radio City Music Hall on Sept. 10 followed by a 9-11 25th anniversary concert the next day at the World Trade Center’s Perelman Performing Arts Center.
Several world premieres are scheduled
Dudamel' subscription concerts at Lincoln Center's 2,200-capacity David Geffen Hall start Sept. 16 with John Adams' Pulitzer Prize-winning "On the Transmigration of Souls," written following the terrorist attacks; a Zosha Di Castri world premiere; and Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony, conducted by Dudamel during his New York Philharmonic debut on Nov. 29, 2007.
Dudamel’s season includes the world premiere of Tania León’s “of Imágenes mestizas” (Sept. 25) paired with Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, which he conducted during his second appearances with the New York Philharmonic in January 2009.
“New York, is a very symbolic place,” he said. “This is the orchestra of the Americas.”
He is appointing Serbian performer Marina Abramović and Argentine composer Gustavo Santaolalla as artists in residence.
Dudamel will conduct the world premiere of Santaolalla’s “El Payador perseguido” to video and still images by Venezuela director Alberto Arvelo (starting March 3, 2027) and Abramović’s staged production of Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale” and de Falla’s “El Amor brujo” (March 10, 2027).
His initial season includes a 10-concert European tour from Oct. 9-22; Puccini’s “Tosca” with tenor Jonas Kaufmann (Nov. 13) that begins a five-year concert opera commitment at Carnegie Hall; and the orchestra’s first performances of Bernstein’s “MASS,” commissioned to open the Kennedy Center in 1971 (June 9, 2027).
“What’s powerful is the vision and the inspiration that we’re conveying, and everything else falls into place,” said Matías Tarnopolsky, who became the New York Philharmonic’s CEO last year.
Trying to find orchestra's unique sound in homogenized era
Hired in February 2023 to start this fall, Dudamel spoke with 83-year-old conductor Daniel Barenboim about the challenges of a 21st-century music director.
“The orchestras, a little bit they sound the same. Everything is becoming very uniform,” Dudamel quoted Barenboim as saying. “In the past you didn’t have access to recordings. It was very difficult to listen to another orchestra. So we have to go back to build that culture -- not only about making a sound, understanding why we make the sound.”
Dudamel concludes 17 seasons as Los Angeles Philharmonic music director this summe r and in New York succeeds Jaap van Zweden, whose six-season tenure ended with 2023-24.
Dudamel intends to conduct in Harlem and Brooklyn.
“Art institutions have to go to the people, not only (be) expecting the people to come to you,” he said.
Times and tastes have changed since Bernstein was television force
While Bernstein was able to emphasize music education with 53 Young People’s Concerts on CBS from 1958-72, Dudamel faces a fractured media landscape where classical music has lost prominence. Tarnopolsky is hoping to develop “Gustavo’s connection to education plus whatever it is in digital media” in an effort “to connect globally on a music education platform that we don’t know what it is yet.”
Dudamel is obsessed with trying to schedule what would be the New York premiere of Messiaen’s 1983 opera “Saint François d’Assise” but says it would have to be in a special place, not Geffen Hall.
He grew up in El Sistema, Venezuela’s famed music education system. His nation has endured political turmoil, including the U.S. capture of President Nicolás Maduro.
“I have to say it’s a sense of hope. We need that. My country needs that. Not only to see the light far (away), if not to arrive at that light,” he said. “We have been talking with the team in El Sistema to create connections with the young people. We have that program that I want to bring here, the fellows, to have to open more opportunities for young conductors to be assistants here.”
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