irritating as hell.
Dudamel conducting Mahler's ninth symphony with LA philharmonic at the Barbican center in London 28th of January 2011.
i cannot find the words to express the horror.
i have nothing against Gustavo which is a very talented young guy.knows Mahler by heart. and has an ok technique to control and lead the orchestra. but thats it. nothing more beyond. this is equivalent to lets say Robert Pattinson playing king Lear at this time of age.i am afraid he is the victim of marketing and greediness.
this symphony which is the farewell and acceptance of fate, life,death - the endless circle of nature and standing above everything looking around\forward\backwards to timelessly to sorrows, memories, happiness and all the fragile texture of human existence- found its musical translation of the meaning in Dudamel hands in either loudness or unbalanced textures. the brass was mostly loud. the harps were not in tune, the strings were OK with warm sound, but in all there was no real balance and no real meanings behind. just people playing "music".
Dudamel's conducting was horrible. in the last movement where it is needed to subdivide the beats , Dudamel was heavily butchering the sub-beats in parallel conducting . instead of having built long meaningful phrases. doing the unexpected. leading the inner energies of the phrases. endlessly walking. Dudamel just cut it with all of his body. this is not music. this is show.
another thing- we couldn't see an crescendo or diminuendo from him. not at all. the music was lacking small nuances which builds it to a big master piece.
this is fast food.Mahler sells. LA phil sells. Dudamel sells. but there is no real event behind this . and that is a shame. this is fraud in broad daylight.
don't get me wrong- i don't even know Dudamel, but the entire marketing if this kid is hollow. he won the Mahler competition. so what? the kids still needs to develop and the whomever let him to conduct this , just hurt him and his natural development.
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