Review: Following Dudamel at the Bowl, Anna Handler has the toughest assignment of the summer
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Set us as preferred Gustavo’s gone.The Hollywood Bowl felt a little forlorn Tuesday night after four long evenings of boisterous 18,000-strong crowds showing L.A.’s many-splendored love for Gustavo Dudamel.He was off to New York or almost — Dudamel did quietly fit in a conversation at the Grammy Museum on Tuesday with Anthony Hopkins about the actor’s new dreamy album, “Life Is a Dream.” There were no more lines for many different Dudamel T-shirts, just leftover Hollywood Bowl ones, and no wait for popcorn or ice cream.The Bowl wasn’t more than a third full for a Beethoven program.
That’s not a bad turnout, but we were mostly quiet as mice (until noisy choppers arrived near the end).But this also left Anna Handler, who becomes the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s conductor-in-residence this fall, with the trickiest conducting assignment of the summer anywhere.At 30 and a former Dudamel fellow, she represents a generation shift for an orchestra that seeks eternal youth.
The orchestra was said to have fallen for her when she made her Bowl debut last summer.Even so, Tuesday she faced an orchestra that had just returned a week earlier from a grueling U.K.tour with Dudamel before jumping into the emotional and grueling farewell Bowl extravaganza.
That began with a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth that was a highlight of Dudamel’s 17-year L.A.Phil tenure and instantly part of Bowl lore.How much juice could the orchestra have left? The video monitors showed many substitute players.
On the other hand, this was also an opportunity for the L.A.Phil to celebrate itself.
Along with an atmospheric five-minute opener by a young British composer, Grace-Evangeline Mason, the program combined two major middle-period Beethoven scores — his famous Fifth Symphony and his Triple Concerto, with a trio of L.A.Phil principal p...