Arts & Events

Gustavo Dudamel, 34 years old, is the latest super-star among conductors. Much in demand internationally, Dudamel is Music Director of both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. This week he brings his Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela to Berkeley for an ambitious and ground-breaking series of concerts, classroom visits, open rehearsals, and master classes. Dudamel himself is a product of Venezuela’s El Sistema, the ambitious and hugely successful national system founded by conductor José Antonio Abreu in 1975 to enhance music education and social change in that country. To date, over 2 million Venezuelan children have received musical instruction, and the Simón Bolívar Orchestra’s 180 members are all graduates of El Sistema.  

Musically, the focus of Dudamel’s Berkeley concerts is Beethoven, as Dudamel conducts Beethoven’s 7^th and 8^th Symphonies in Zellerbach Hall on Thursday evening, September 24, and Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony on Friday evening, September 25, in the Greek Theatre. On Thursday, the program opened with a hearing of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, Op. 84 (1810). Beethoven was commissioned to write an overture to a performance of Goethe’s play Egmont, which dealt with the brutal subjugation of the Dutch people under tyrannical Spanish rulers and hailed the people’s calls for revolution. Beethoven, who had already premiered in 1804 his opera Fidelio, with its celebration of struggle against political oppression, threw himself with zeal into the composition of the Egmont Overture. In Berkeley, under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel, the Simón Bolívar Orchestra gave a stirring rendition of this brief work, emphasizing the overture’s opening gloom and foreboding right up to the moment of Egmont’s death and political martyrdom, which is followed by a moment of silence, then to a final, exhilarating song of victory as the work closes. 

Next on Thursday’s program was Beethoven’s 8^th Symphony in F major, Op. 93. Critics have long noted the similarities between the 7^th and 8^th symphonies of Beethoven. Both works exude a festal air, even one, at times, of raucous celebration. Some listeners hear in these symphonies a drunken dance or a Bacchic orgy. Beethoven himself once declared, “I am Bacchus incarnate, appointed to give humanity wine to drown its sorrows…. He who divines the secret of my music is delivered from the misery that haunts the world.” There is certainly an intoxication of the spirit in these two symphonies.  

The 8^th opens with a dance-like theme in F major. The second theme enters, surprisingly, in D major, but quickly achieves the home key of F major. The central section climaxes with one of the longest passages of sustained fortissimo in all classical music. The second movement, an Allegretto scherzando, employs pizzicato plucking of the strings to mimic a metronome’s tic-tock, accentuated by the woodwinds. This brief movement is full of humor and gaiety. The third movement, a Minuet, achieves a rich sonority featuring horns and clarinets over an arpeggiated accompaniment in the cellos. The finale is of monumental proportions, its length is nearly equal to that of the preceding three movements. It is boisterous and joyous throughout, ending with a coda that culminates in a high-spirited ending. As conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, Beethoven’s 8^th Symphony was a spirited expression of festive joy. 

After intermission, Dudamel returned to the podium to conduct Beethoven’s 7^th Symphony in A major, Op. 92. Though Beethoven considered the 8^th to be “much better” than the 7^th, it is the 7^th which has won the greater acclaim through the ages. Listeners respond to the 7^th’s driving rhythms that run throughout the work, propelling the music ever onward, and drawing the listener along with it. The work opens with a slow introduction of two themes. The first is passed down by the winds over long, rising scales in the strings. The second is a poignant melody for oboe. Out of this introduction the movement shifts gears, and proceeds up-tempo to its vivace conclusion. The second movement, an Allegretto, is a wonderful, dreamlike evocation of pure freedom. It has been described as utopian; and under Dudamel’s baton, the Simón Bolívar Orchestra made it sound utopian. This is as emotionally satisfying a movement as Beethoven ever created. The following presto is a study in contrasts of sonority and dynamics, sensitively rendered here by Dudamel’s conducting. The finale is a movement of extraordinary rhythmic drive. Dudamel tore into this music with a fierce passion. At moments he crouched low and reached forward as if to grab the sonorous low notes from the instrument played by the first cellist directly in front of the conductor. This is intoxicating music, and it reverberated in me later that night even as I slept. Talk about making an impression! 

To follow: A review of Friday’s performance by Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Orchestra of Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony at the Greek Theatre