What took Dudamel to New York? Cheesecake, they say
OrchestrasA flaky story in today’s New Yrok Times reports that, on his first appearance with the New York Philharmonic last winter, Gistavo Dudamel accepted two squares of cheesecake made by cellist Maria Kitsopoulos.
The Times adds:
Apparently he never forgot it. In February, news broke that Dudamel — a singular figure both exalted in the insular classical-music world and adored by the public, and even granted his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — would become the music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic in 2026. (Trumpets blare!) As reported in The New York Times, when Dudamel returned to Lincoln Center to meet with his colleagues to be, he told Kitsopoulos that her cheesecake was a major factor in his decision to cross the continent.
Read on here if you want the recipe.
photo: Chris Lee
uh huh, accepting gifts from and exchanging winky wink banter with a cellist subordinate in the orchestra; didn’t end up spectacularly well for Tár.
My God proof read please.
Of course, his first appearance with the New York Philharmonic was not, in fact, last winter.
Yep, you’re correct, but maybe what was meant was the first concert ‘last winter’ – as in the first of many?
I mean, New York cheesecake is REALLY good.
If you like eating bricks.
Soft, smooth, sweet bricks.
that is true , but Maria Kitopoulos as well as her amazing brother Constantine Kitsopoulos grew up in a wonderful town in NEW JERSEY !! They were students who attended a wonderful school in Summit , NJ and where I met them as students.
Meanwhile, I suspect his successor at the LA Phil will be Susanna Malkki – or a variation thereof – who I originally thought might be snapped up by the NY Phil.
Such an outcome will earn social-political brownie points for the band in LA, but it will come off (marketing-wise, ticket-sales-wise, charisma-wise, symbolically-wise) as ending up with a bit of the short end of the stick.
They didn’t renew her principal guest conductor contract even before Dudamel announced he is leaving.
Susanna Malkki had better get the job, then, so I can keep on watching you bend over backwards to justify why women shouldn’t be conductors.
You inserted the identity politics into the equation, I didn’t.
If Malkki, regardless of her gender, had that certain intangible (and also tangible) star quality, she’d be a good replacement for a Dudamel. That’s an important quality too. It helps sell tickets and brings more PR to an orchestra.
Something you might want to consider. If Malkki started espousing politics you didn’t care for, would you still want to root for her? See: JK Rowling. Etc.
It is true that something that may appear to be a forgettable trifle or even mundane on the surface may set momentous events into motion, inadvertently touching a leading tone, as witness Tony teasing his uncle about what was for their traditional crowd an embarrassing enthusiasm.
Two squares?
Imagine if she had given him the whole cake.
I note The Dude will be conducting two operas in Paris for 23/24. Wagner and Thomas Ades.
Thank goodness it wasn’t that other kind of cheesecake that attracted the Maestro to New York. New York is known to wreck marriages.