From the ranks of Venezuela’s El sistema
rises a young man with the makings of a
SUPER CONDUCTOR!!!
And with him,
a musico-socioeconomic MODEL
for the rest of the world!
SUPERCONDUCTOR (one word) - a material that conducts electricity (or energy, if you will) without resistance; a 20th century discovery with the potential for awesome real-life applications, scientifically referred to as a macroscopic quantum phenonenon.
SUPER CONDUCTOR (two words) - a usually tuxedoed person standing center stage on a podium (or in the pit) with his back to the audience who generates electricity without resistance throughout the concert hall (or opera house) as he coaxes waves upon waves of inspired music from similarly attired musicians seated before him, while wielding a wand with the right hand and making cryptic motions with the left; musically acclaimed as a PHENOMENON.
Today, the phenomenon is named GUSTAVO DUDAMEL. Only 26 years old, he hails from neither Europe nor North America where fabled conductors usually come from, but from Barquisimeto - a second-tier city in west central Venezuela, some 200 miles away from the capital city of Caracas. By the time he turns 27, he will have conducted many of the world’s great orchestras, generating electricity without resistance, in most all of the world’s great concert halls. No small wonder that this phenomenon has also been labelled a MIRACLE!
And a miracle is what one hears while listening to Dudamel’s latest recording - of Mahler’s Symphony No.5 (!), his second on the Deutsche Grammophon label, yet again with his beloved all-Venezuelan SIMON BOLIVAR YOUTH ORCHESTRA, comprised of even younger musicians. Mahler’s 5th is a formidable undertaking for any orchestra, yet Dudamel and his ensemble of more than 150 players (aged 12 to 25) deliver with beauty of sound, powerful intensity and a musical maturity one would expect only of revered orchestras. One is right to be awed, just listening to the CD in the solitutde of one’s living room.
But to see and hear the phenomenon in a concert hall is to be totally convinced of his gift and charisma; to witness “a conducting animal” in action - LA Philharmonic Music Director ESA-PEKKA SALONEN’s visceral description of the “kid from Venezuela” on first seeing Dudamel conduct at the Mahler competition in Bamberg where he emerged the clear-cut winner; and to experience the amazement that Berlin Philharmonic Music Director Sir SIMON RATTLE - a leading advocate of Dudamel and his Youth Orchestra, and predecessor in the pedigreed line of classical music’s “enfant-terribles” - felt when he proclaimed Dudamel “the most astonishingly gifted young conductor I have ever come across!” It is a reputation that precedes Dudamel’s concert appearances.
- GJ Cajipe / FanFaire © 2007
