Alex Ross deconstructs Dudamel
NewsFrom his New Yorker review of Mahler 9th at the Philharmonic:
… Bernstein paid scrupulous attention to its minutest markings. Consider how he builds the huge opening paragraph of the first movement, in which a gently swaying theme is unfurled, enriched, darkened, magnified, and left hanging. Each time through, he makes sure that the players observe the accents and phrasings that delineate this evolution. When the harmony sinks from D major to D minor, the melody takes on a more jagged, unsettled character. The ensuing restatement of the theme, in full-throated cry, is like an overcoming of crisis—and Mahler’s journey into the abyss is only just beginning.
Little of that came through in Dudamel’s reading. The first phrase had a placid, humdrum air. In the turn to D minor, the articulation remained more or less the same, smooth rather than effortful. At the height of that section, Mahler inserts grace notes before wide leaps in the first violins—the bow glancing against lower strings on the instrument. Under Dudamel, those effects were almost imperceptible: the line kept pressing forward, with no particular urgency….
There’s more here.
This about much sums up what I’ve also heard and perceived in different repertoire. No there there.
Oh, come on. Like the average listener knows whether a conductor is observing the minutest markings? Or playing up little grace-note effects? Unless you’re a classically trained musician, little of this registers with audience members. What does register is the drama and excitement that he draws from the orchestra, and that much was pretty clear by the ovations Dudamel received.
One need not know the markings of a score to be made aware of changes in affect when the markings change: they have an emotional impact. Dudamel does excitement well; he takes less care about subtler emotional cues — subtler, but crucial, especially in music so driven by shades of angst, as Mahler’s.
So the answer is to dumb it down?
Average listeners rush in where devoted Mahlerites fear to tread.
In my experience, the audience may not know the details, but will react to a superior interpretation without necessarily knowing why it was superior. That said, I have no idea how accurate Mr. Ross is here. I rarely encounter a critic who hears what I hear, although it must be said that Alex writes beautifully.
Ross is not accurate at all. Dudamel was very particular about following the accents and phrasings in the first movement and spent substantial time rehearsing this.
I didn’t hear Mr. Dudamel’s performance, but in reading this post I was reminded of this excerpt from an essay on Mahler by Harold C. Schonberg, dealing with Mahler as conductor:
“To him there was no such thing as a minor detail, for minor details were important — as every great conductor knows.”
Surely, we — as performers and partakers — owe Mahler the composer the courtesy of observing •his• meticulously-notated minor details, and of expecting them to be honored.
Schoenberg HATED Bernstein and very rarely gave him a good review. And Ross is wrong the Geffen Hall is just fine.
(Not quite sure how Schonberg’s assessment of Bernstein’s conducting fits in here…)
Please ignore the previous “Not quite sure” comment…my fog of obtuseness lifted and I pieced together Charles’ train of thought.
Define “fine”, please? Is “fine” good enough for New York? (or for spending half-a-billion dollars, for that matter?)
I think it was the flamboyance he didn’t like.
“And Ross is wrong the Geffen Hall is just fine.” Sorry I disagree. It is NOT “fine”, it’s been upgraded from a D listening experience to a C. Ross is one of the best writers on music in the world, let alone the US, in my experience he is always on the money. And he is here. The hall remains overbright and the sound is glassy with too much treble and very little bass response. Nowhere near “just fine.” However, it is better than it was, it’s just never going to be Carnegie or Symphony Hall or Orchestra Hall (Detroit). Nowhere close.
I LOVE how all of your western commenters take your composers’ accents and dots as a scripture… but once it’s about some Tchaikovsky or Rach – it’s suddenly all about the FEEELING and IMPACT and the notaion is suddently not important at all.
How bloody hypocritical is that?
It’s official, both the New Yorker and the New York Times think that Dudamel is out of his depth.
It”ll be a long 5 years in New York if the local critics are critical, assuming, given his desultory record at the Paris Opera, that he actually decides to stay the full 5 years, or like Mahler before him, stay for 2 seasons in New York, collect his million dollar paycheck (you KNOW the Philharmonic must be paying him in the millions!), then hightail it out of town.
Like many a music prodigy, he is discovering that at middle age, you actually have to have something profound to say about a piece, that conducting it with no technical flaws is no longer sufficient.
Of understanding Mahler’s score, does Dudamel read German proficiently? Maybe he shouldn’t have started with the Mahler 9, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring would have highlighted his skill sets better.
Yes, yes and yes. I didn’t go to the Mahler 9 because I don’t rate Dudamel as a Mahler conductor. I did hear his Mahler 1 with the (absolutely excellent) LAPO a few months back at Carnegie Hall. Quirky (in the worst manner of Maazel) without any of the bucolic charm you would get in say a Kubelik or Bernstein performance. Wonderful playing mind you which gets you a long way in Mahler 1.
I don’t think you need German proficiency to conduct Mahler. Google Translate can easily take care of the few German directions.
For the record, the Times has been pretty favorable in its coverage of the Dude. Its critic just didn’t care for his Mahler 9.
If you put “gemütlich” in Google Translate, it spits out “cozy”… is that really what it means?
As a retired musician and NY Phil subscriber, I found Sat night’s Mahler 9th performance acoustically satisfying with a wonderful bottom that nullified the usual drowning out of strings by winds and percussion – perhaps the first time I’ve felt this way in many years. Orchestral balances were perfect!
I’ve been following the Dude since he arrived on the scene. I’ve heard the CDs, been to some concerts and I still do not understand what the fuss is all about. He’s ok, but no more than average. There have been, and still are, conductors who have made a much bigger impact when they were Dudamel’s age – and even before. That one disk, Fiesta, was excellent. And they loved him in LA. But having heard his Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and even Mahler…you can do a lot better than this conductor. A lot worse, too.
The fact that people still take Alex Ross seriously is a sad reflection of the state of affairs of the classical music industry.
“Opera buffs who read the book will flip immediately to the section described in the index under “Levine, James . . . persistent rumors surrounding.” Curious stories have followed the conductor from the beginning of his career. “There was malicious gossip, rumors of orgies, and homosexuality, and chamber music played in the nude,” Fiedler writes. That’s in ascending order of horror, presumably. Later on, the rumors became more vicious. Fiedler, who ought to know, systematically dismantles them. They belong in the category of personalized urban legends that attach themselves to certain celebrities for no discernible reason. Creepier than the rumors themselves is the delight with which people in the music world have repeated them. Some have done so out of professional envy, some out of sheer malice. Levine has denied the rumors, but his most effective response has been his performances, which make all the gossip sound bitter and small.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20160119143150/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/11/05/metropolitan-lives
“Levine is preëminent among American conductors, yet he remains a curiously contested figure. Some intelligent listeners of my acquaintance are perpetually dissatisfied with him, although they seldom agree whether his performances are too predictable or too idiosyncratic, too polished or too ragged. Fifth-hand rumors of the urban-legend variety swirl around him. Last spring, the Times quoted anonymous players who questioned Levine’s ability to give a clear beat on account of a tremor in his left arm. This kind of chatter inevitably catches up to any conductor who stays in one place for a long time.”
https://web.archive.org/web/0/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/11/29/maestro-north
If you’ve wondered how Levine had managed to last so long at the MET despite his repulsive behavior, Alex Ross is one of the culprits. An opportunist extraordinaire, with no moral scruples whatsoever. He will jump on whatever bandwagon that can keep the attention on himself. In recent years, that would be blatant DEI politics.
I find Mahler structurally flabby anyway, so it’s no surprise if the Dude also did!
That’s your failing, not Mahler’s, certainly in the Ninth. I am preparing the preconcert talks on Mahler Nine here in Chicago for when Hrusa conducts it June 8-10. The more I live with it, the more I am finding myself utterly in awe of how rigorously it is constructed.
Stop protecting your religion! This IS a religion by now. Noone seem to be able to say ANYTHING except the best about anything classical. Is this the free country anymore? The commenter must have right to express his/her opinion without your uneducated insults, Max.
What nonsense!
Perhaps Mahler’s vision is too far reaching for you.
Not much Dudamel could do with NY Phil in the short term. That orchestra has long forgotten how to communicate through music. At least that is my impression every time I listen to them. The MET orchestra, despite its recent troubles, remains much more expressive. The good news for NY Phil is that they picked just the right person that could help them improve in this regard, *over several years of work together*. For someone who loves to decry the star system, Ross has always inexplicably exaggerated what a guest conductor is able to do and underplayed the inherent qualities of the orchestras themselves.
Wake me when a New York critic isn’t comparing someone to Bernstein.
Or a Cleveland critic comparing whomever to Szell…………
Alex Ross: “…the climaxes made hard and cold by the problematic new acoustics of Geffen Hall.”
When the hall was featured several months ago on PBS’s Great Performances, I could detect some of what’s described. The room apparently lacks enough resonance to go with its greater clarity.
When certain reviewers and even musicians (of the NY Phil or the NYP’s CEO—a former violinist) last October gave Geffen a big thumbs up, I wasn’t sure what exactly was going on. I went, maybe my eardrums aren’t as good as their hearing is?
Beyond that, If a recording uses top-notch equipment and hasn’t been overly tweaked by sound engineers, the sonic quality where an orchestra is performing generally is evident. Not always – or totally accurately – but often.
(Carnegie may still be a bit better than Fisher/Geffen is.)
Well, Carnegie is a LOT better. In my experience as a listener what musicians say about the hall isn’t that valuable – they’re listening on the platform to themselves and each other. That’s a far cry from the sound picture in the audience. A few conductors will have an assistant conduct for a few minutes while they go back into the hall to “see what it sounds like” – they are too few in my opinion. Stokowski did it at every venue he guested at. Then again, he really cared about how the orchestra sounded…………to the listener.
:”Alex Ross: “…the climaxes made hard and cold by the problematic new acoustics of Geffen Hall.” Well I’ve been about 10 times this season and sat in different places. Net net – he’s right. Exactly right.
I don’t live in NY, but attended a concert at the new hall a few months ago. I was shocked at the sound–bright, bordering on brash, no dark undertones at all, almost tinny. I don’t have enough experience to know how it used to sound, but “hard and cold” is a pretty good description of how it sounded one night in March.
Yes. As my Economics professor used to say “you’re not wrong!”
I have attended concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall for 20 years. Even there, the sound can vary greatly depending on where you sit. The piano, for example, always sounds better on the right side of the hall.
Carnegie Hall? I heard it sounded better before the renovation. I only went after the renovation and remembered not being too impressed by the acoustics.
Yes, it was better before the renovation (late 1980s). Initially they put concrete under the stage and denied that they did. Comical. Took the NY press about a day to prove that a lie. Then they removed it. There is less reverb and less bass than prior to the renovation. It’s still very good of course. Having said that you no longer hear people chattering as they come up the stairs to the Balcony nor the jumping dancers in the studio on top of the back of the hall………..the subway you can still hear especially downstairs.
The musicians of his current and future orchestra think he’s great. The musicians who see countless conductors, week after week, from the awful ones to the decent ones (the great ones are all dead as the saying goes), and they all hold him in high regard way above conductors like Malkki who Alex Ross seems to love. So let’s see, who should we believe? The musicians who love Dudamel, the audiences who love Dudamel, or the music critics in NYC who don’t like him…. I know who I’m going with.
Alex Ross is playing politics again, plain and simple. He is probably mad that Dudamel going to New York is the last straw that led to his buddy Chad Smith’s departure. [redacted: abuse]
In all fairness Dudamel cannot pay attention to “minutest markings” because he never conducts with the score in front of him.
Certainly, he paid attention to every marking while studying the score. At least, he should have.
I had the honor of playing a number of concerts under Claudio Abbado. He always conducted for memory and rigorously followed the markings in the score. I have not seen enough of Dudamel to say whether this is the case with him (although I enjoyed the three occasions when he conducted us), but it is simply not true that conducting from memory precludes a scrupulous adherence to the composer’s instructions.
Maybe he can’t read music…….:)
Thumbs downers – this was a joke. Get a sense of humour for heaven’s sake.
Dudamel has a photographic memory.
“If Dudamel intended to fashion a strictly classical, anti-sentimental reading of the Ninth, in diametrical contrast to Bernstein’s heart-on-sleeve manner, he succeeded all too well. The symphony was impeccably played, interpretively lucid, and emotionally inert—the antithesis not only of Bernstein but of Mahler.” … Reminds me of the sort of things people say about Boulez’s Mahler. Oh well, different strokes …
Isn‘t that exactly how NYPhil always play by default? Cold and clean? Like a well oiled soulless machine?
Not under Toscanini or Stokowski or Mitropoulos. Not that I heard any of them but I talked to people who did….
So we’ve got some clueless NY Times critics fabricate a nonsensical parallel between Bernstein and Dudamel to generate a few extra clicks. Then we’ve got another New Yorker critic making a big deal out of his objection to this comparison made up by his fellow press members, and we have another article angling for clicks. In total they have contributed exactly zilch of value in this circle jerk.
He’s not entirely wrong, but when Bernstein was starting in New York, this is almost word for word how critics spoke of him too, and now he’s the bat with which critics beat the new guy.
Not gonna lie, I smell success more than ever.
Sorry, Ross was a James Levine apologist and attacked Seiji Ozawa, who is revered as a conductor by everyone else.
I’ve listened to numerous recordings the Dude has made and symphony orchestras like Vienna, Gothenburg, the New York Phil. and the LA Phil do not invite schmoes to conduct them.
Seiji Ozawa may be revered as a conductor *now*, but he was most certainly not universally revered during the last few years of his tenure at the Boston Symphony. (Early on, perhaps, but not at the end.)
For what it’s worth, I have never heard or read a single negative word about his performances and recordings with the Saito Kinen orchestra.
“Humdrum and placid” pretty much sums up a lot of Dudamel’s conducting (IMO of course).
The much praised Deborah Borda is leaving New York with a mediocre legacy. The gaudy decor, emphasis on unobstructed sight lines and elaborate built-in sound and light systems make for one of those all-purpose halls, and if successful in this regard will reduce the Philharmonic’s upkeep, yet leave them with a mediocre venue. Different, or increased, expenditure might have ended with a happier result.
Eventually audiences and even performers will flee (it seems that Lincoln Center has already nearly eliminated is role as a presenter of visiting classical musicians.) And what will remain is a venue mainly hosting pop events and school graduations.
As for Dudamel, initially his bouncing curls and big smile will sell tickets, but later, as in the Aesop fable, people will realize that the emperor has no clothes.
In short, near term budgetary advantage has been favored over long term artistic growth and stimulation. Thanks to Alex Ross for pointing this out to a gullible public.
You must be joking. Deborah Borda’s legacy will be celebrated for generations to come.
It is worrying the level of NY critics, a renewal is urgent
The Paris opera-goers are glad to be rid of him: he conducts just 2 operas this season, I think….Ades & Lohengrin.
No, we are not
In Texas there is a saying “all hat and no cattle.” That perfectly describes Dudamel. He’s all flash, no substance. This won’t end well.
It has seemed that Alex Ross had nothing negative to say about anything in Los Angeles since he went native out there over the past few years. Now Los Angeles comes to New York and. . . .
Alex Ross had nothing negative to say about anything in Los Angeles because his buddy Chad Smith let him use LA Phil to advance their (Smith’s and Ross’s) political agendas. Ross never cared about the orchestra and its players. He harps on and on about programming only, and by leaving the playing itself unmentioned he created—deliberately—the false impression that the playing is so mediocre that it’s not worth talking about. By doing so he elevates the importance of his dear friend Chad Smith and downplays the work of Dudamel and the orchestra.
I’m just glad LA Phil got rid of Chad Smith in time so that he could not foist a DEI music director on the orchestra. Such as Susanna Mälkki, who Ross predictably loves but who consistently turns in performances that are well below-average for the orchestra, as evidenced by their excellent series of broadcasts.
Mock Mahler?????
Fi for shame!
Probably a bitter man, Dudamel is a genius, exactly the man our great times deserve!!!!
Ross in the past rationalizing away the dark nature of James Levine doesn’t speak well of Ross’s judgment or objectivity. Not too uncommon, however, since most people filter their opinions through a thick lens.
In Ross’s case, his own personal and political nature, and creative preferences definitely color his view of the world around him.
He states that Dudamel’s performance was a bit different in NY from the way it has been in LA. To be expected, after all, since Dudamel is dealing with a different set of musicians in a different concert hall. He has to familiarize himself with a new set of moving parts.
The variables of the skills and talents of musicians, and the acoustics of the space around them definitely enter the equation.
I attended Friday nights concert and was left totally unmoved. Next, Seiji Ozawa is not revered. I was a BSO subscriber his entire reign in Boston and he had nothing to say in Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mahler Bruckner. My friends who were also subscribers exchanged tickets for his concerts for the better BSO guests from Tennstedt through Haitink. He regularly got poor reviews. Lastly Geffen Hall is missing any warmth.
Any listener there could share their opinions – so why do we care so much about this one person’s view… Just because it is published – does this mean Dudamel shouldn’t stay there? And what about the audience member that had an engaging experience – why do they need to read this? And it doesn’t matter how great Bernstein or Mahler was – they’re both dead. Some people just have to stick to recordings… you either have to be that guy, or the guy who goes to concerts with Dudamel and hope you can get something out of it. Look at this way – there’s certainly worse conductors out there. And Dudamel is realizing (perhaps once more) that he shouldn’t read any reviews.
Mahler is a tough. VERY few conductors understand Mahler. The music has bohemian roots and requires detail and schmaltz. It’s what made Bernstein superlative at it. Perhaps the most difficult of them all is the Fifth, which most conductors treat as quasi-liturgical. I went to hear Dudamel in the 9th. It was okay. Nothing more.
Dudamel’s approach to conducting is clearly not that of Carlos Kleiber, who must have spent months researching a new piece away from the podium. But his 55 performances (and recordings perhaps most of all) did leave a legacy. I would guess that Gustavo flies about more than Carlos did…
My wife and I attended the May 19 performance of Mahler 9 with Dudamel conducting the NY Phil. I strongly disagree with the negative reviews of both Alex Ross and Zachary Woolfe. Both seem to have a fairly narrow conception of what this symphony should sound like.
Like all great symphonies, Mahler 9 can sustain a wide variety of interpretations. Sure, Dudamel could have injected more emotion, grotesquerie, coarseness, and pain into this music. All of that is fair game in this massive work. This was a sunnier, smoother Mahler 9 than some. But it was also majestic, tender, and beautiful in the right places. It was a coherent interpretation that made sense on its own terms.
My wife, who is not prone to fits of emotion during concerts, was crying at the end of the work. The musicians of the NY Phil rose to the occasion and played magnificently. I’ve heard a lot of Mahler over the years, including Bernstein and the NY Phil at the old Avery Fisher Hall. For my taste, this ranked up there with the best.
John kelly: “The hall remains overbright and the sound is glassy with too much treble and very little bass response. Nowhere near “just fine.” However, it is better than it was, it’s just never going to be Carnegie or Symphony Hall or Orchestra Hall (Detroit). Nowhere close.”
———-
Boston has traditionally been rated above Carnegie and generally ranked among the big three with the Musikverein and the Concertgebouw. But I’ve never seen the hall in Detroit given honorable mention.
I’ve tuned into a recording from there released in late 2022 of Mozart No 38 played by the Detroit Symphony and notice its sound track towards the end goes mono—so non-attendees do depend on sound engineers. FWIW, I’ve also just switched on recordings from Boston and Vienna, and the sonic differences are quite detectable.
When the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House was revamped last year – and praised by some observers for its supposedly much improved acoustics – a quick listening of its premiere concert made it obvious to me that the attendees were laying it on way too thick.
Similarly, I’ve read about the way that Geffen (then Avery Fisher) after its 2nd revamping in 1976 was at the time praised by various critics (eg, the NY Times) and musicians, and how a variation of that has apparently occurred again in late 2022. So I realize just how subjective and capricious judgment and perceptions really are.
Incidentally, the NY Times music critic’s article on Dudamel’s recent concert also contained a brief comment about Geffen Hall’s acoustics.
That’s about right on all counts. Geffen is bright and lacks depth. For many years the book on the space was the only way to really fix the acoustics would be to demolish the entirety of the building and start from scratch. The “revamping” in 1976 was the third, not the second, as they made major changes after it opened, though not as extensive as they did in ’76. I like NJPAC a lot better than Geffen.
You’re right. I live in NY but go to Boston sometimes and the hall there is one of the wonders of the acoustical world. Karajan rated it better than Vienna. Well, I’ve been to Vienna and Amsterdam and they’re all great halls. However, Detroit is FABULOUS and if you get a chance to go you should. Upstairs or downstairs just great great sound. Very good orchestra too. I heard a Respighi program a year or so ago. Went twice. Just sensational sonically. Ray Chen played the Sibelius – the violin sounded GORGEOUS in there.
Joel Stein: “Lastly Geffen Hall is missing any warmth.”
——-
The acoustics of Geffen very much interest me since the science behind that is so complicated and unpredictable. But even the way that sound quality is described can be somewhat vague or ambiguous. Your “warmth” probably refers to reverberation, which is a feature of a room that I can never figure out.
Why a relatively large or small space have quite an echo while another large or small space does not are due to what?
Why do some large or small spaces have aural clarity, while other large or small spaces do not?
Another thing: When performances are being described, the quality of the acoustics of a room that an orchestra is performing in seem at least as important or influential as the skills or tastes of a conductor, etc, are.
See if you find this useful/interesting……
https://www.arauacustica.com/files/publicaciones_relacionados/pdf_esp_543.pdf
John kelly: “However, Detroit is FABULOUS and if you get a chance to go you should. Upstairs or downstairs just great great sound. Very good orchestra too.”
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Using recorded sound, it’s Interesting comparing the acoustics of the two spaces. I can detect the sonic properties of Boston Symphony Hall compared with the ones in Detroit Orchestra Hall:
https://youtu.be/e0olrn2ocLc
https://youtu.be/8gBS9nkeC8Y
Curious about Orchestra Hall’s history, I notice it over the past 50-60 years has been a bit more checkered or uncertain than that of Symphony Hall.
I wonder how much of the sound properties of a room affect a conductor? Does a middling conductor (and musicians) seem a bit better if he or she is performing in a good hall and is a top-notch conductor (musicians too) a bit more middling if he or she is performing in a mediocre hall?
I met Mariss Jansons and Gil Shaham after a concert at the Concertgebouw some years back. Shaham played the Bruch #1 and the sound was sensational – after that the Alpine Symphony (The musical equivalent of a Big Mac with extra fries perhaps but fun nonetheless). We chatted about the superb acoustics – Jansons said “the hall can be a Stradivarius or something less – here it’s a Strad.”
If you’re listening to Detroit recordings – some of the Mercury recordings were made in Orchestra Hall before it fell into disuse – and some at the Cass High School (which had even better sound for the Mercury 3 mike setup). One I would recommend as sonically outstanding as well as a superb version – Dorati’s Copland disc on Decca/London. El Salon Mexico, Rodeo and a glorious Appalachian Spring. That’s a benchmark disc by any standard. Dorati really cared about how his records sounded.
Lenny had charisma, humanity and musicality in spades.
Dudamel has zero.
Dudamel is Dudamel, not Bernstein. Nice try, Alex Ross. I prefer what Dudamel did. Ross made the mistake of comparing while listening. He should have just listened. Alex Ross can be oh-so will his expectations. Thank goodness that Dudamel is not a clone.