When Gustavo Dudamel instructs the Los Angeles Philharmonic to stand at a curtain call, the players stand. He motions, sit; they sit.<\/p>\n
Sunday afternoon, they wouldn\u2019t stand. Again and again, they stubbornly refused. With an encouraging smile, Dudamel took the concertmaster\u2019s arm, gently lifting him to his feet, but he sat back down when no one in the orchestra followed. Dudamel never looks nonplussed. He looked dumbfounded.<\/p>\n
This was Dudamel\u2019s moment, his last concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall as L.A. Phil\u2019s music and artistic director. Those who were<\/i> standing comprised the capacity audience, their cheers deafening. The orchestra lustily applauded like everyone else.<\/p>\n
It turns out that Dudamel is both adept at saying goodbye<\/a> and just as good at not meaning it. Eras don\u2019t end for him so much as become transition points. There was reportedly Champagne flowing in the dressing room after Sunday\u2019s matinee, but the L.A. Phil needs to buy its bubbly in bulk. Dudamel\u2019s contract continues through the summer, and the orchestra will still see plenty of him. In August he takes the L.A. Phil on tour to the Proms in London and the Edinburgh International Festival in advance of four big nights at the Hollywood Bowl.<\/p>\n Gustavo Dudamel receives a standing ovation Sunday in his final concert in Disney Hall as L.A. Phil music director.<\/p>\n (Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n Dudamel then returns to Disney in December to conduct the L.A. Phil, though with three lofty new titles to his name: Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic, L.A. Phil Diane and M. David Paul artistic and cultural laureate and Michael Eisner founding director and conductor laureate of Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA). He\u2019s going to need new business cards the size of an iPhone Pro Max to fit all that in.<\/p>\n But the effort to get his orchestra on its feet was not an idle gesture. Dudamel\u2019s Disney \u201cfinale,\u201d however momentous, lacked nearly all the trappings of pomp. In a Thursday night marathon, he paid tribute to the orchestra members, giving 17 players solos in various concerto movements. The one bit of unavoidable pomp was Dudamel conducting the premiere of John Williams\u2019 \u201cBravo Gustavo,\u201d commissioned by the L.A. Phil and featuring four solo trumpets \u2014 Thomas Hooten, Christopher Still, Jeffrey Strong and James Witt \u2014 in a joyous, triumphant celebration of what has become a close friendship by the master of cinematic joyous triumph.<\/p>\n The program itself was a potpourri of surprise, given what some of the players came up with. The long list of 11 mostly rarities featured 13 soloists. It began with a madcap movement from a bassoon concerto by Rossini (with Whitney Crockett as deadpan soloist). Among other curiosities were Matthew Howard and Joseph Pereira cheerfully pulverizing Philip Glass\u2019 Fantasy Concerto for Two Timpanists and Orchestra, as well as Boris Allakhverdyan suavely ghosting jazz legend Artie Shaw in his Clarinet Concerto. There were too many to list and it\u2019s too bad because this became a one-of-a-kind showcase of orchestral versatility, which ended with the premiere of another new Dudamelian orchestral tribute, Gabriela Ortiz\u2019s \u201cMujer Arena.\u201d<\/p>\n Patrons clap for Gustavo Dudamel as he conducts his final concert Sunday in Disney Hall.<\/p>\n (Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n The final subscription weekend concerts featured two large-scale works for the orchestra and an indispensable Los Angeles Master Chorale. John Adams\u2019 \u201cHarmonium\u201d operates on questioning, shifting moods of introspection, humility and awe. In Venezuela composer Antonio Est\u00e9vez\u2019s \u201cCantata Criolla,\u201d a song contest between a macho Venezuelan troubadour and the devil leads to the spiritual ecstasy of exorcism.<\/p>\n When Dudamel signed his contract to be music director of the L.A. Phil, he said his first priority was to conduct \u201cCantata Criolla.\u201d He did so in his first season to help inaugurate a new festival he called \u201cAmerica and the Americans.\u201d That festival idea formally and informally has been a thread throughout Dudamel\u2019s 17 L.A. Phil seasons, at Disney and the Hollywood Bowl and YOLA, as well as on tours to Europe, Asia and Latin America.<\/p>\n There was also surely symbolism in beginning this Disney occasion with a work by Adams. Dudamel\u2019s first Disney concert as music director opened with the premiere of Adams\u2019 \u201cCity Noir,\u201d the composer having just been appointed the orchestra\u2019s creative consultant and a composer to whom Dudamel has become deeply committed over the years. His first concert at Lincoln Center as music director of the New York Philharmonic in September will open with Adams\u2019 \u201cOn the Transmigration of Souls,\u201d in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of 9\/11.<\/p>\n Written in 1980, Adam\u2019s score \u201cHarmonium\u201d is ethereal and heavy in the choral settings of unsettling poems by John Donne (\u201cNegative Love\u201d) and Emily Dickinson (\u201cBecause I Could Not Stop for Death\u201d and \u201cWild Nights\u201d). Adams does not stop for meaning, his early minimalist style causing the words to flow over you whether in somber reflection or the wildness of wild nights that do, indeed, stop for death.<\/p>\n Dudamel first conducted it at the Hollywood Bowl<\/a>, where it washed over the amphitheater like a mist. In the immediacy of Disney, it sunk in as wondrous reflection on Donne\u2019s line: \u201cThough I speed not, I cannot miss.\u201d<\/p>\n Est\u00e9vez\u2019 \u201cCantata Criolla\u201d is a Venezuelan classic from 1954 but little known outside the country, despite having been championed by Aaron Copland as part of his Pan-American musical advocacy. The lushly poetic text by Alberto Arvelo Torrealba happens to have been written by the grandfather of one of Dudamel\u2019s closest collaborators, film and theater director Alberto Alvero, who directed the L.A. Phil \u201cDie Walk\u00fcre\u201d <\/a>last month.<\/p>\n Dudamel\u2019s 2010 performance <\/a>of Cantata Criolla\u201d was a theatrical event devised by Arvelo that included staging and a film and an introductory reading of a text by screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, \u201cAm\u00e9rica,\u201d read by actors Helen Hunt, Edgar Ramirez and Erich Wildpret.<\/p>\n Members of YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles) perform during Gustavo Dudamel\u2019s final concert Sunday in Disney Hall as L.A. Phil music director.<\/p>\n (Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n This time there was no film, no lighting and not much theater, Dudamel relying on the sheer intensity of the music. Rather than incantation, \u201cAm\u00e9rica\u201d was given dramatic veracity, enacted by an irresistible sextet of YOLA musicians, who also happen to be budding thespians. Their ages ranged from 10 to 20. Arriaga\u2019s poem<\/a> is a long series of names, phrases, lines from politicians and writers that encapsulate America. When a young child intones with arresting passion Lincoln\u2019s \u201cA house divided against itself cannot stand,\u201d or Allen Ginsberg\u2019s \u201cI saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,\u201d we are made aware that the best minds of our generation will not let us stop them, period.<\/p>\n Gustavo Dudamel exits the Walt Disney Hall stage Sunday.<\/p>\n (Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n Without a break, Dudamel began Est\u00e9vez\u2019s complex cantata, which he conducted from memory, with a searing fury that did not let up for 35 minutes. The two vivid soloists were tenor Anthony Le\u00f3n as the cocky troubadour and baritone Eleomar Cuello as the cocky devil. Hopeful adrenaline triumphed over evil but only with help from above. The marvelous Master Chorale marvelously set the moody scene for triumph.<\/p>\n The \u201cDude\u201d who conducted \u201cCantata Criolla\u201d 16 years ago was a youthful advocate, barely older than the oldest now in YOLA. The Dudamel who led this \u201cCantata Criolla\u201d is now a messenger, and Sunday\u2019s concert was not a party but a mission. <\/p>\n![\"Patrons](\"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/0897fa8\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/4823x3215+0+0\/resize\/320x213!\/format\/webp\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Ff8%2F71%2F3f9736504e588ba8407d50357971%2F1557666-et-dudamel-disney-farewell-review-0016.jpg)
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