On 10 November 2007, Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times wrote:
“The Venezuelans …success means that the entire
class structure of classical music is now in danger of falling apart.”
CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
It’s ‘Dudamelmania’ as classical music’s future shifts to a new class
By Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
A week has passed since Gustavo Dudamel and his Simón Bolívar Youth
Orchestra set Walt Disney Concert Hall afire. The sight and sound of
practically 200 Venezuelan musicians in their teens and early 20s
tearing through Beethoven, Bernstein, Mahler and Latin American music
with an enthusiastic fervor the likes of which none of us had ever
witnessed from a symphony orchestra will not soon be forgotten.
The town is abuzz. Politicians are talking about music education –
for real. I’m getting e-mails headed “Dudamelmania” and
“Dudamellitis.” Pink’s, the hot dog palace, has named a dog after the
26-year-old conductor who will become music director of the Los
Angeles Philharmonic the season after next.
Meanwhile, the young Venezuelans — who are the product of a
remarkable education program, El Sistema, that puts music in the lives
of disadvantaged youths who might otherwise be gang members or worse
– are busy wooing and wowing America. Raves have poured in after
concerts in San Francisco and Boston. They will make their New York
debut at Carnegie Hall on Sunday afternoon and Monday evening.
Fortunately, this good news from Latin America comes just as the
sensation-hungry media are starting to forgo their endless stories
about how classical music is dead.
Venezuela already has more schoolchildren in orchestras than on soccer
teams, and the country’s president, Hugo Chávez, has vowed to increase
El Sistema’s enrollment from 250,000 to a million. In China, all
parents who can afford to give their children music lessons do so; the
country has millions upon millions of piano students who will someday
be classical music consumers.
Closer to home, regularly full houses at Disney Hall are an
encouraging sign. Classical record sales, unlike those in most other
genres, are experiencing a significant uptick. Alex Ross’ “The Rest Is
Noise,” an enthusiastic survey of 20th century music by the New
Yorker’s music critic, made The Times’ bestseller list last Sunday.
In a brilliant 12,000-word polemic in the New Republic, Richard
Taruskin brings out the critical howitzers to persuade academics and
various boneheaded classical music elitists to lighten up.
Like it or not, he advises, classical music is changing, which means
it is alive.
The Venezuelans are a big part of that change, but the revolutionary
spirit they bring with them, a visceral approach to the classics that
is theirs alone, is not without a threat to the status quo. They have
done it on their own. They have not gone to Juilliard, and Juilliard
has not sent masses of instructors to them. They have not taken master
classes with famous musicians. Their success means that the entire
class structure of classical music is now in danger of falling apart.
And that threat may explain why the New York music establishment does
not appear amenable to the full Dudamel/Bolívar treatment. Is Carnegie
afraid the hottest thing on the music scene will be too scorching hot
for its audiences or simply that it won’t sell?
For whatever reason, neither the Symphonic Dances from “West Side
Story” nor Mahler’s Fifth is being offered to Manhattan concertgoers.
Instead, on Sunday with the Venezuelans, Emanuel Ax will play Chopin’s
Second Piano Concerto (which is basically a solo piece with some minor
orchestral accompaniment). And Simon Rattle, not Dudamel, will conduct
the orchestra in Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony.
There’s more. At the end of November, Dudamel will make his New York
Philharmonic debut, and the orchestra is promoting the program as “Gil
Shaham plays Dvorák.” You have to scroll down the orchestra’s website
to find Dudamel’s name in teeny-tiny type. Maybe the orchestra fears
that this young conductor will detract from what it hopes will be the
excitement of its own young new music director, Alan Gilbert, who will
also begin in 2009.
Classical music has always initially rejected the Other. In the Middle
Ages, the church discriminated against secular musicians. Wagner
railed against the Jews. Mahler, who was forced to convert to Roman
Catholicism to have a career in Vienna, created a furor by being the
first composer to include elements of street music in his symphonies.
And let’s not forget the racism in the West that once greeted Japanese
musicians, who were said to play without soul.
The Venezuelans confuse us. They bring something new. But we cannot
forget that while these young students are amazing audiences here,
their fellow university students back home are demonstrating against
Chávez’s latest curbs on the Venezuelan constitution.
Is the Bolívar band being used as a propaganda tool by Chávez? And if
so, what are we to make of Chávez cozying up to Iran’s president,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has banned Western classical music from
Iranian radio and TV? If Chávez has some sway in loosening things up
in Iran, might that not lead to some good, however distasteful the
players?
There are no ready answers to these questions, but they are certainly
worth exploring — and on the highest levels. The breaking down of the
class structure of classical music will be messy. But art is messy
anyway. And look at the alternative.
A motto of José Antonio Abreu, who founded El Sistema 30 years ago,
has always been that if you put a violin in a child’s hand, he won’t
pick up a gun. Nov. 3, at a reception after Dudamel and his orchestra
rocked Disney, civic leaders spoke about how important this program is
for society and how much L.A. needs something like it.
Only a week before, Darius Ever Truly, a talented young actor who was
starring in a play at the Odyssey Theatre, was stabbed to death after
leaving a party — possibly by a gang member.
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