As to Dudamel, could it be that he was named GUSTAVO for a then hidden but now obvious reason? How many young people does one come across who get themselves acquainted with Mahler’s 5th Symphony at age 11, begin to study it in earnest at 16, conduct it with a professional orchestra at 23, and record it at 26 with one of the world’s most respected recording companies?

The similarity between GUSTAVO DUDAMEL and GUSTAV MAHLER does not begin and end with the name they share. Today, few remember that Mahler’s fame as a conductor preceded by decades his reputation as a great composer.*

Indeed, at the turn of the 20th century, when Mahler was the conductor of the Vienna State Opera and ART was the order of the day almost everywhere in the world, he was-after the Austrian emperor-the most famous man in Vienna. Offered to him in 1897 when he was 37 years old, the music directorship of the State Opera was the plum position of his conducting career, which began when he was 25 years old in a summer theatre Bad Hall, a town in middle upper Austria.

Fast forward to turn-of the-millennium… in a gymnasium in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, a precocious 17-year old boy named GUSTAVO was about to face the test of his young life. Baton in hand, he stood unfazed on a podium and began to conduct a humongous ensemble of about 800 orchestra and choir members, launching a conducting career (with the CHILDREN’S ORCHESTRA of VENEZUELA, now famously known as the SIMON BOLIVAR YOUTH ORCHESTRA OF VENEZUELA*), that would take him barely 6 years later to the Mahler competition in Bamberg (Germany) which he won, hands down, conducting Mahler’s 5th. “A conducting animal!” ESA-PEKKA SALONEN, LA Philharmonic Music Director (who served as a juror in the competition and himself an erstwhile enfant-terrible among today’s conductors), quickly reported back to LA. The rest, while not quite history yet, is definitely history-in-the-making.

Today the Principal Conductor as well of Sweden’s premiere Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, in 2009 he inherits the baton from SALONEN as Music Director of one of America’s top-tier orchestras, a plum position by any measure. His youth and boundless energy combine with a star quality that makes him the indisputable and much-needed icon for the future of classical music. This being the 21st century, the world is his stage as he conducts from the podiums of hallowed concert halls, and millions begin to track the orbit of his rocket-ship career and perhaps witness the dawning of a DUDAMEL era in the performing arts. If this were early 20th-century Vienna, wouldn’t this phenomenon of a conductor be called GUSTAV? -GJBCajipe /© FanFaire

*Renamed SIMON BOLIVAR SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA in 2010 when the average member’s age exceeded the limit set for youth orchestras