In the March issue of Vanity Fair, Robert J. Hughes writes, “Hollywood is always on the lookout for the net big thing. Come fall, its newest breakout star won’t be on the big screen but on the stage of the Walt Disney Concert Hall. When Gustavo Dudamel becomes music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic he will be poised, at the age of 28, to become the kind of wide-ranging, energetic ambassador for classical music not seen since the meteoric rise of Leonard Bernstein, more than 60 years ago. … The Venezuelan is music director of Sweden’s Gothenburg Symphony and in his 10th year as music director of the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. … How many young musicians, let alone classical-music conductors, can boast of being chosen as the ‘next big thing’ on iTunes, as Dudamel was for his recording of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony? … Dudamel treats his players with the abiding warmth of long-lost family members. His conducting philosophy: nothing more than instinct, he says.”
Posted March 17, 2009
Photo: Gustavo Dudamel
Credit: Sylvia Lelli
