Here is an interesting video on the young conducting sensation Gustavo Dudamel on 60 Minutes. Maestro Dudamel has been taking the classical music scene by storm in recent years. At only 27 years of age, he been appointed music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic which will effectively start in the 2009-2010 season . Before his appointment in L.A., many American orchestras were going after him including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He is currently Principal Conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and is in his ninth year as Music Director of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in Venezuela. He has many debuts in the 2007-2008 season including the Vienna Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic and the Berlin Stattsoper.
Gustavo burst onto the global music scene when he won the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in 2004. Up until then, he was relatively unknown outside of his native Venezuela. He has garnered a great deal of press coverage in the past couple of years. To read an excellent article about him in the New York Times magazine click here. He has also been featured in Time and Newsweek.
It is very exciting to think about the potential and future of this great talent. I think he is filling a void that has been present in the classical music field for some time now. There has been a lull in the quest to find the next great conductor. A handful of orchestras have been going entire seasons without having a music director and even experimenting with having multiple conductors. There is always the case when orchestras have a music director and they collectively don’t like him/her. Given the current state of classical music looking for leaders and vision in the 21st century, Dudamel fits the bill perfectly. He has the charisma and personality that if marketed properly, could make his orchestras a total sensation. He will make classical music concerts extremely exciting. This will be infectious to the public at large. Instead of orchestra concerts being the same mundane thing, he will bring an energy that the audience can feed on. This is what music is all about, stirring emotions and feeling better than when you entered the concert hall. I look forward very much to the day I can play under his baton.
In any field of endeavor, there are a few divine gems that only come around once in many generations. Einstein in science, Mark Twain in literature, or Michealangelo in art. In the realm of classical music , the renowned conductor Carlos Kleiber was one of these amazing beings. Mysterious and aloof, this genius rocked the music world every time he was on the podium.
Son of the famed German conductor Erich Kleiber, Carlos was born Karl Ludwig Kleiber in 1930. He was born in Germany, however lived most of his childhood abroad. His father resigned from the Berlin Opera in opposition to the policies of the rising Nazi party in Germany. They fled the country in 1935 and moved to Buenos Aires. Against his father’s wishes, Carlos began studying music and later as if it was fate, became a conductor.
Carlos Kleiber lived his life away from society. Herbert von Karajan often joked that Carlos would only conduct “when his freezer was empty.” He never had an agent or signed written contracts. He preferred to negotiate himself and seal the deal with a handshake. He once told Leonard Bernstein that he wanted to grow old in a sun drenched garden, only drinking, eating, sleeping and making love. Later on in his life, he would only appear sporadically. He was often begged to come back to the podium. A famous story includes his compensation being a $100,000 Audi made to his exact specifications.
Kleiber decided that he never wanted to have a permanent position. He was the first choice to succeed Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic, and after they offered him the position he declined. He conducted all the venerated opera houses and orchestras of Europe with his specific repertoire. He was known to dislike recordings and was quoted as saying “every unproduced record is a good record.”
He only appeared in the United States a handful of times. He first concert was conducting Otello with the San Francisco Opera in 1977. In 1980 he conducted the Chicago Symphony and a few years later he conducted the Metropolitan Opera in the works of La Boheme, Otello, and Der Rosenkavalier. There is a interesting story when he made his debut at the Met. There was a tremendous amount of anticipation and excitement about the famed Kleiber coming to conduct. They scheduled extra rehearsals for this storied debut. Pavorotti was the tenor accompanied by the sublime Mirella Freni. He cancelled most of the rehearsals with the orchestra and just left the room and said see you at the concert. Kleiber was notorious for cancelling rehearsals with the anticipation of a fresh and extemporaneous concert. With Leonard Bernstein in the audience, the opera performance was amazing. The audience applause would go on and on. The legendary Maestro made his mark.
I recall several conversations I had with members of the Vienna Philharmonic about Carlos Kleiber. They spoke of him as a pure genius. One of the last concerts he did with them was Alban Berg’s Wozzeck. I remember one of their concertmasters Rainer Honeck saying to me that is was one of the best concerts of his life. He said that Kleiber thought in pictures, not words. His recording of Beethoven 5 and 7 with the Vienna Philharmonic is one of the best recordings I have ever heard. My friend and Vienna Phil violist Hans P. Ochsenhofer raved about the day they made this recording.
For more information about Carlos Kleiber click here.
For a complete discography of his recordings click here.
Here is a picture of the cover of this famous recording.
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About John Grillo
John started playing Double Bass at the age of 11. He attended The Julliard School during high school and was a scholarship student at Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana where he studied with Lawrence Hurst. After graduating from IU, he attended the Manhattan School of Music completing his Masters Degree. (more)
