Gustavo Dudamel has rapidly become the “it” conductor in today’s symphonic music scene. With appearances ranging from L.A.’s Disney Hall to “Sesame Street” to a television ad for California tourism, the 32-year-old conductor is everywhere these days, and he seems to make a splash wherever he goes. Despite his busy schedule and the constant demand for his time, Dudamel manages to continually innovate in his programming and in his performances, and it seems that 2012 has started with a real barn-burner in this respect. Dudamel’s titanic “Mahler Project,” which kicked off on January 13th of this year, wrapped up its first leg in L.A. on February 4th, and it has since put down roots for the Caracas, Venezuela, leg of the the undertaking.
The Mahler Project, conceived by Dudamel as spotlight on the some of the greatest music ever written for the symphonic medium, showcases the conductor’s two main orchestras, the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra in Venezuela and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The two orchestras, while led by the same musician, are of vastly different temperaments and characters, which makes the prospect of the collaboration all the more remarkable. The premise of the project is simple enough: combine two great orchestras a month-long span in which they will perform all of the Mahler symphonies in each of their home cities. The reality of the project, as any person who has ever taken part or even heard a Mahler symphony can guess, is much less straightforward.
Epic projects are not by any measure rare or unheard-of in the classical music sphere, but Dudamel’s project is in a category by itself. Dudamel’s own website writes this in an update from January 31:
Over the past two weeks, Gustavo Dudamel, the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic have been performing together as part of the Mahler Project, a landmark celebration of the Austrian composer’s symphonic works. Since the Project’s opening performance on January 13, the LA Phil and the Bolívars have been taking turns performing his symphonies as well as his Songs of a Wayfarer.
On February 4, the two orchestras cap off the LA portion of their collaboration with Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” at LA’s Shrine Auditorium – a performance that draws on the combined musical forces of the Bolívars, the LA Phil, 16 choral ensembles, and eight vocal soloists. The Mahler Project then begins its Caracas residency on February 7 with a performance by the Bolivárs of Mahler’s Second Symphony, “Resurrection,” perhaps one of Mahler’s most tender musical contemplations of life, mortality, and renewal.
The sheer magnitude of the logistical implications alone is daunting, but Dudamel has pulled the L.A. residency of the Mahler Project off with flying colors. The L.A. Times’s “Culture Monster” feature hinted at the superhuman nature of Dudamel’s efforts throughout the project: “Tuesday night with the Bolívars at Disney, Dudamel conducted an 80-minute Seventh, which is the least performed and most elusive of Mahler’s nine completed symphonies. On Thursday, Dudamel led the first of three performances of a lyrically transcendental 90-minute Ninth with the L.A. Phil. In extraordinary performances -– conducted, as usual, from memory — Dudamel reached new and Mahlerian heights. If he was exhausted, he didn’t show it.”
While he is most likely physically drained from the effort, Dudamel’s performances are, emotionally speaking, anything but exhausted. Most major orchestras perform a single Mahler symphony per year, if that (the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is also undertaking a similar project with greater space between the concerts), and, as such, most musicians do not have the opportunity to live in Mahler’s extraordinary scores, which create a universe in and of themselves. Dudamel’s own artistic presence seems to have undergone something of an evolution through this process. The L.A. Times writes that “his total Mahler immersion appears to have taken him to a new place where questioning Mahler’s intentions is out of the question. More than ever before, Dudamel went with the Mahler flow. Not abstractly, not distractedly, certainly not without ego, but with a kind of fervor of acceptance.” For a conductor whose own personality is an integral part of the currency on which he trades, such acceptance and submission to the absolute art of a long-dead composer is nothing short of truly radical. It speaks not only to the extraordinary dedication of Dudamel to his project but to the almost mystical power of Mahler’s symphonies, and it proves that the Mahler Project is time and energy very, very well spent.
Catch the culmination of the Mahler Project as the Simon Bolivar Symphony and the LA Phil combine forces in Venezuela or a live cinematic broadcast of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony on February 18.
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