Desde China

Publicado originalmente en el Miami Herald el 13 de diciembre de 2008

Gustavo Dudamel, now touring with a Venezuelan youth orchestra, has become one of the world’s top young conductors.

BY TIM JOHNSON
McClatchy News Service

BEIJING — When he was 6 or 7 years old, Gustavo Dudamel used to set up an imaginary symphony of toy figures, put Tchaikovsky on the family stereo, pump up the volume and swing an imaginary baton, conducting with childhood abandon.

”Those toy figures that I played with and dreamt about as a boy have now become flesh-and-blood musicians,” the 27-year-old Dudamel recalled.

Through further alchemy, the frizzy-haired Dudamel has turned into one of the world’s brightest up-and-coming symphony conductors, snatching the job of leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic, starting next year, and catching the attention of music critics far and wide who acclaim him as possibly a once-in-a-generation maestro.

It’s been a dizzying ride for a modest Venezuelan who came out of nowhere. Jay Leno and David Letterman are calling, and everybody else wants a piece of him. His schedule is booked well into the next decade. The press has dubbed the hoopla “Duda-mania.”

JOYOUS TOUR

And here he is, crossing Asia with the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, and he couldn’t be more joyous. That’s because the orchestra was his ladder to success. Dudamel spent 22 years with the ”musical miracle” system supporting the orchestra. Without the system, Dudamel knows he might be another trombonist pumping out salsa riffs with a band in Barquisimeto, his Venezuelan hometown, just as his father did.

The visit of Dudamel and the youth symphony has special resonance in China, a nation of rising musical power, where some 38 million students are believed to be studying piano and tens of millions practicing other instruments. China and Venezuela share a bond — and perhaps a bit of rivalry — over their musical gift. While China’s musicians are renowned for technical proficiency, the Venezuelans are all passion.

”Could a country best known for corn, petroleum and revolutionary rhetoric dethrone the Middle Kingdom as classical music’s heir apparent?” asked the Time Out Beijing magazine.

When Dudamel took the podium at the National Grand Theater, Chinese officials, diplomats and music aficionados eagerly came to witness a conductor wearing the mantle as the new Leonard Bernstein or Carlos Kleiber. Some were wondering if Dudamel had been overhyped.

The performance was electric as Dudamel led his youth symphony through Ravel, Castellano and Tchaikovsky, ending with a trademark encore from West Side Story that had musicians leaping from their seats, twirling instruments in the air and shouting ”Bravo!” (Check it out on YouTube.)

”He’s everybody’s hope for the next generation of conductors — blazing energy, connects with audiences, down to earth. He puts on a hell of a show, which classical music needs,” said David Stabler, classical music critic for The Oregonian, in Portland, Ore.

Many countries, including China, voice interest in Venezuela’s ”musical miracle,” seeking to learn from it or even replicate it. Already, young Chinese musicians are winning acclaim, most notably pianists Lang Lang and Yundi Li, and China wants to deepen its youth music system.

”We can learn much from our Venezuelan colleagues,” said Chen Zuohuang, artistic director of the National Center for the Performing Arts.

Nearly every professional musician Dudamel directs is enthusiastic about his ability to express himself from the podium, using hands, face and baton.

”It’s a confidence and a body language that very few conductors achieve,” said Ernest Fleischman, retired manager of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He was on the jury that selected Dudamel and offered him the job to lead the symphony. “The musicians trust him from the first moment.”

While Dudamel may be young, he’s hardly untested. After winning the 2004 Gustav Mahler conducting competition in Germany, he’s appeared with the Berlin, Vienna, New York and Israel philharmonics, as well as the Boston Symphony, and conducted orchestras for opera at Italy’s La Scala and the Berlin Staastsoper.

REMARKABLE SYSTEM

He has put a spotlight on Venezuela’s children’s and youth orchestras that specialize in absorbing at-risk youth, including juvenile delinquents, and turning them into classical musicians.

The youth orchestras were begun 33 years ago by a former legislator and Cabinet member, Juan Antonio Abreu, a trained violinist and harpsichordist. El sistema, as it is known, is part social project and part music training ground. It has 150 children’s and youth orchestras and music schools, comprising 275,000 children.