Dudamel & The Los Angeles Philharmonic on Great Performances

The PBS Great Performances broadcast of Gustavo Dudamel's Inaugural Concert with The Los Angeles Philharmonic earlier this week was an interesting event. Much has been made of this 28-year-old "wunderkind" from Venezuela. He certainly got some terrific sounds from his orchestra in the two pieces performed, John Adams' "City Noir" and Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D Major.

I have always admired Adams as one of the leading composers of our day, and this latest work is a blockbuster, and one I must catch again when this program is rebroadcast. I prefer to never judge a new compoistion on a first hearing, so will have more to say on this piece later.

Now for the Mahler. This youthful work has never been my favorite Mahler opus, but it is filled with new ideas (or as his earlier critics said were re-workings of old ideas), wonderful orchestration and a brilliant finale. The funeral march is what has always set me back. I never could understand why Mahler used as his theme the simple, happy children's tune of "Frere Jacques" for such a funereal subject.

I now must admit a personal failing. I do not have the patience I used to, whether it is listing to music, watching a baseball championship game, or reading a book that takes forever to get into. When the Yankees gave up four runs in the first inning of their 5th game the other night, off went the TV! I had a similar reaction to Dudamel's reading of the first movement of Mahler's First. The restatement of the opening theme as the orchestra increases its dynamics leading to the tutti was performed with an accelerando that immediately brought me to think that thgis young conductor, as brilliant as he may be, has a long, long way to go. No doubt he will get there eventually as his musical intellect matures, but this was Mahler I just did not care to sit through.

Let's just leave it at that!