How letting Dudamel be Dudamel led to unpredictable, wonderful L.A. music
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Set us as preferred In early April 2007, I was invited to a surreptitious dinner with the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s music director Esa-Pekka Salonen and the orchestra’s president, Deborah Borda.We gathered in Salonen’s kitchen and over take-out sushi discussed how in three days, Easter Sunday, the Los Angeles Times would be the first to tell the world that Salonen had decided to step down in two years and that Gustavo Dudamel would become L.A.
Phil music director beginning with the 2009-10 season.Although now Dudamel is perhaps the best known name in classical music and will end his 17 seasons as L.A.Phil music and artistic director with four varied programs at the Hollywood Bowl Aug.
20-23 before taking on that role with the New York Philharmonic next month, he was still very new on the scene back then.He first came to attention after winning a new conducting competition in Bamberg, Germany, in 2004, when he was 23.
Yet by 2007 he was enough of a sensation that major news agencies in the U.S., Europe and South America picked up the front-page story.Al Jazeera and a radio station in Mumbai tracked down my cellphone number and called for comment.There was no question that Dudamel was a once-in-a-generation talent and that his signing had been an L.A.
Phil coup.The orchestra was riding high.
It had triumphantly opened Walt Disney Concert Hall four years earlier, and over the past 15 seasons Salonen had made it the most farseeing orchestra in the land — and beyond.The L.A.Phil also knew a thing or two about developing young talent from unlikely lands.
In 1961, the 24-year-old Zubin Mehta from Mumbai (then Bombay), India, made his L.A.Phil debut and the next year became music director and remained so for 16 seasons.
Salonen was an unknown 26-year-old Finnish composer and conductor when he made his U.S.debut cond...