Music & the Arts
May 23, 2025 • 1:50 pm Comments Off on Philip Glass: Symphony No. 11
I had the honor of writing the program note for this week’s performances of Philip Glass’s Symphony Np. 11 by the New York Philharmonic, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting:
It wasn’t until he was 54 that Philip Glass began writing symphonies. With Symphony No. 1 in 1992, he opened up a new creative frontier that has remained an essential part of his work ever since….
Filed under: Gustavo Dudamel, New York Philharmonic, Philip Glass, program notes
February 13, 2019 • 6:54 am Comments Off on Protected: Tan Dun’s Moving Buddha Passion Gets Its U.S. Premiere by LA Philharmonic
Filed under: Gustavo Dudamel, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Musical America, review, Tan Dun
November 1, 2016 • 12:10 am Comments Off on Dudamel and LA Philharmonic on Tour with Mahler’s Ninth
Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic will perform Mahler’s Ninth Symphony at Benaroya Hall. (VERN EVANS PHOTO)
The charismatic conductor makes his first-ever Seattle stop with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for a one-night performance of Mahler’s profoundly moving Ninth Symphony.
Filed under: Gustavo Dudamel, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Mahler, Seattle Times
March 6, 2016 • 9:36 am Comments Off on A Bright Mahlerian Cosmos from Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic
My review of this weekend’s Mahler 3 by Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic is now posted on Bachtrack:
No work is more emblematic of Mahler‘s symphonic philosophy than the Third. Or at least that version of his philosophy filtered by Sibelius, who recollected Mahler’s words decades after their meeting in 1907, long after his colleague’s death: ‘The symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything’.
But it was another Mahlerian statement that Gustavo Dudamel’s interpretation with the Los Angeles Philharmonic brought to mind – a statement reported by his confidante Natalie Bauer-Lechner referring specifically to the Third Symphony when it was still a work in progress: ‘To me, “symphony” means constructing a world with all the technical means at one’s disposal’.
Filed under: conductors, Gustavo Dudamel, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Mahler, review
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MEMETERIA by Thomas May