Bela Bartók, Concerto for Orchestra
Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony no. 7 in A major, Op. 92
Leonard Bernstein, Symphonic Dances from West Side Story

Seen in its true context, the concert was even more impressive than it was in isolation. As the program explained, the concert was really part of a three-day residency of the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra at the New England Conservatory, which has had a long-term relationship with the orchestra and its parent organization, the State Foundation for the Venezuelan System of Youth and Child Orchestras, now a generation old. (for more details of the residency, including a symposium on El Sistema, as it is called, .) Today this organization of 250,000 people provides musical education to children, most of them from poor families, across the country, with the intention of providing them with a livelihood and a dignified social position. These children are primarily trained by the 15,000 music teachers involved in the program to play in orchestras, of which the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra is the flagship. The founder was on hand, José Antonio Abreu, a doctor of Petroleum Economics and graduate of the Venezuelan National Conservatory of Music, who has served as Minister of Culture in Venezuela. He and the orchestra received honors and presentations both before the concert and before its second half, from representatives of Venezuela and the City of Boston, and not least Tony Woodcock, the President of the New England Conservatory.

As interesting and encouraging as this socially useful implementation of music education is, the long involvement of the New England Conservatory with South America and Venezuela in particular is equally impressive. The Dean of the NEC's Division of Preparatory and Continuing Education, , has been traveling in South America and establishing fruitful collaborations with South American institutions since the mid-seventies. He himself founded the Youth Orchestra of the Americas in 2002, which brings together gifted young musicians from North and South America.

As much as there was to celebrate by the ample contingents from the NEC and South America, nobody seemed to forget that we were there to hear music, and there were expectant rounds of applause for both the Orchestra and Mr. Dudamel, when he appeared to launch into the Bartók. Throughout the concert, Dudamel used extravagant gestures reminiscent of Leonard Bernstein in his youth, but he often went further, leaping, dancing, and assuming expressive contortions. As I remember his work with the BSO, I believe he was somewhat on his best behavior with them and showed some restraint in approaching a new orchestra of that reputation. Usually I find nothing more irritating than this sort of display, but in Dudamel’s case, as he worked with his young musicians, whom he'd clearly rehearsed meticulously, every gesture communicated something germane. One could immediately see the result in the musicians and and hear it in the music.

Dudamel was striving for a big sound in the opening bars of the Concerto for Orchestra, the violins, first and second grouped together at his left, produced a strident, metallic, but impressive sound. Splitting them would, as almost always, have been an improvement. (Important antiphonal effects in both the Beethoven and the Bartók works were also lost.) Lower strings were strong, but thinner than in an ensemble like the Boston Symphony. In effect this only added clarity to the textures. Another factor working in the opposite direction was the sheer size of the string sections, at least 18 first violins and an equal number of seconds. This made for thick, massive textures which the winds could not easily penetrate. And for Dudamel orchestral tutti are great waves of sound, not necessarily to be articulated with inner detail. In more transparently orchestrated fast passages the articulation of individual phrases became somewhat blurred, but just when one is coming to the conclusion that he has pushed the orchestra beyond their limitations, a quieter passage of thinner texture would follow, which, even at a rapid tempo, showed extremely clear articulation and nuanced dynamics among the voices.

Dudamel’s tempi were fairly active from the beginning, hinting of the urgent, rhythmically alert interpretation ahead of us. To call it "rhythmically alert" is an understatement; one could call rhythm an obsession of Dudamel’s. He was keenly aware of the rhythmic qualities of each phrase and of their implications for their rhythmic interplay in counterpoint. Even if a passage were not overtly related to dance, the sprung tension of its phrasing pointed the way to the dance sections which were so much in the foreground of this reading. And for him his extravagant gestures with his whole body prove an effective means of communicating this to the players.

Dudamel is fond of sudden, breathtaking shifts of dynamics, particularly ff to pp, and his orchestra can give him pretty much all the agility he demands. He is so fond of this dramatic abruptness, that it risks becoming a mannerism. Although one would have to characterize his Concerto for Orchestra as an extroverted performance, he always settled into more reflective passages with full concentration, and he elicited beautiful ppp's. One passage typical of his insight was the passage in the third movement, Elegia, in which a dark phrase in the violas descended under violin trills. The contrast of color and expression was astonishing. The finale was, as one would expect, hair-raisingly energetic and brilliantly virtuosic.

Dudamel clearly programmed the Beethoven Seventh together with the Concerto for Orchestra because he saw significant parallels between them, and his interpretation was cut from the same cloth. It was fast, exceptionally fast, conjuring up the late Toscanini, even. He lost no opportunity to make the most of its dance-like rhythms, and the performance was full of hairpin dynamic shifts. His flowing introduction to the first movement led to a rhythmically subtle transition, accellerando, to the dancing first subject. His insight into the development section was truly astonishing—a wonderful surprise for me, since I haven't heard issued last year. In the Allegretto, which he took as a true allegretto, certainly not too fast. The pp in the fugato passage was particularly beautifully executed. The scherzo and the finale were, as one might expect, intense.

These were vivid, original, even idiosyncratic, but fundamentally convincing performances. It is obvious that Dudamel has studied Toscanini assiduously, but he has progressed well beyond the point of emulating him. Everywhere, his thorough knowledge of the score and the thoughtfulness of his interpretative decisions were evident. His rapport with the musicians of his orchestra was total, and it was a wonderful thing to see and hear the strings digging in to their more energetic passages and pouring themselves into lightning-fast tutti.

It was on the whole an almost equal joy to hear Bernstein's extension of his music for West Side Story scored for a vast symphonic orchestra, although by that time it was getting to be just too much extroversion, and I felt my ears and mind were beginning to shut down. Bernstein called the piece "Symphonic Dances," but he did include some of the quieter psychological moments from the stage version as well. While Dudamel certainly observed the dynamics and lyrical phrasing of these passages, he didn't quite enter all the way into them, as if he were sticking his head through a doorway into a dark room, pausing duly and passing on, without walking in. Otherwise his energetic, colorful reading was thoroughly delightful.

A look at Gustavo Dudamel’s biography in the program indicates that he is due to play with most of the great orchestras of Europe and America over the next season. He will be a very busy man for years to come. I hope that this brilliant young conductor will give himself enough time for study and reflection, so that his keen musical predilections do not become hardened into mannerisms. On the other hand, the intense racing passages in which detail became a trifle slurred recalled a bygone era, when orchestras and their conductors were not as obsessed with the perfection of every detail as they are today. Above all, it was wonderful to see and hear musicians taking risks.
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More about Dudamel? Click here to read about his brilliant concert with the BSO at Tanglewood in 2007.