A wild, untamed musical spirit

On April 9, the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced the appointment of Gustavo Dudamel as the orchestra’s next music director, beginning in 2009. The news was a bombshell, and the global media went into astonishing high gear. India called. Al Jazeera requested an interview. “60 Minutes” insisted upon its 20 minutes with the fastest-rising star in classical music. But after a Philharmonic news conference, the fastest-rising star in classical music was nowhere to be found.

He was headed to Rome for an audience with the pope. Or more accurately, the pope was in the audience for Dudamel. Exactly a week after his L.A. news conference, the young conductor led the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra in a special 80th birthday concert for Benedict XVI at the Vatican. Hilary Hahn was the soloist in a Mozart violin concerto, and the concert concluded with Dvorák’s “New World” Symphony. There were 7,000 people in the cavernous Paul VI Audience Chamber. The concert was also televised, and Deutsche Grammophon has now released it on DVD.

In addition, DG has recently made available for download on iTunes the Philharmonic performance of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra conducted by Dudamel at Disney Hall in January -- part of the program that sealed his appointment. And on Oct. 9, the label will issue a CD of him conducting Mahler’s Fifth Symphony with the Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, but that disc is already out in Europe and can be ordered from www.amazon.co .uk and other overseas sources.

All of this comes as a revelatory Dudamel bonanza. At the time of the Philharmonic announcement, his only recording was of Beethoven’s Fifth and Seventh symphonies with the Bolívar band. Now, if you want to know what all the fuss is about, that recording and the new ones provide a hint. But be warned, it is only a hint. Excitement can be found in each release, but there are also compromises.

Two years ago, shortly after Dudamel’s American debut with the Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, Deutsche Grammophon signed him with lots of hoopla. The company traipsed to the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, the following February to record the Beethoven and Mahler symphonies with the youth orchestra, which Dudamel has led since 1999. Like him, the players (all younger than 25) came up under El Sistema, the countrywide music education program that has more kids playing in orchestras than are on soccer teams.

This orchestra is right now taking Europe by storm. This month, it played the Proms in London. That was broadcast live over the BBC and will be repeated at 6:30 a.m. PDT Wednesday (it streams at www.bbc.co .uk/radio3). The program consisted of Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony, Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story” and some Latin American favorites. The playing was so hot that the staid Brits simply couldn’t keep still. The sound of them hooting during the encores is a riot. The press was ecstatic. “I am not sure anything quite like Gustavo Dudamel and his extraordinary group of young musicians have ever hit the Proms before,” wrote the Guardian critic Andrew Clements, who is hardly known for hyperbole.

But this may be a group that has to be experienced live. Unfortunately, the Beethoven and Mahler recordings were made under studio conditions, and spontaneity was lost. There is energy in abundance, to be sure. Dudamel’s fingers are always working the emotional thermostat. The rhythmic vitality that comes through is as close as you can get to canning wildness. The last movement of the Beethoven Seventh takes off like a rocket. All three symphonies end terrifically. The culmination of the Mahler is enough to make one stand up and cheer the CD player. But there are rough passages as well, particularly in the Mahler. The strings clot. Dudamel, with his youthful enthusiasm, can be both very fast and very slow. He doesn’t quite maintain the tension in a sluggish, although warmly phrased, Adagietto. My guess is that with the adrenaline flowing in a concert hall, things would seem very different, which we will soon be able to find out, since Dudamel and the Bolívar will play the Mahler at Disney in November.

We might also consider that while the disc hasn’t been released in the States, it is already old news. A year and a half makes a huge difference in a conductor of Dudamel’s age and experience, and that makes the more recent live recordings far more valuable.

Alas, Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra on iTunes is presented in unacceptable sound that simply drains the life out of a living, breathing, hyperventilating performance. Apple requires listeners to purchase its concert downloads at a measly 128 kilobits per second. DG provides a slightly better 320 kbps for critics and broadcasters, and the difference is huge. Yet even the high rates can’t compete sonically with LP recordings made half a century ago. The time has come for DG to demand a much higher level of technology from Apple or move its recordings to sites (such as Magnatune) that can provide near CD-quality sonics.

That leaves the pope’s birthday DVD. What an odd video this is: A German radio orchestra is placed in a giant room with probably little in the way of acoustics and with the pope, seated in the middle in full regalia, as the center of attention.

Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 is slow and drab, with Hahn ultra-serious. But Dvorák’s “New World” is one startling burst of fire. Here, at last, you can see why everyone is talking about Dudamel. The immediacy of his gestures seems to make the music exist in four, rather than three, dimensions. An orchestra imported from Stuttgart might seem strange, but Benedict XVI is German. Besides, the orchestra is excellent.

I can’t imagine a better 80th birthday present. In rejuvenating a hoary symphony, Dudamel seems to transfer that freshness to everyone around him. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but when the pope walks onstage at the end of the concert to thank Dudamel, Hahn and the orchestra, he seems to have a spring in his step that wasn’t there when he entered the hall.

Much concern has been expressed about Dudamel’s future. That concert suggests a way of dealing with that concern that is, ironically, Buddhist. If we are foolhardy and turn our attention to predicting his capacity for growth -- will he be the next Bernstein or Salonen? -- we miss what he has to offer right now, which is far more important.

Dudamel conducts for the moment. His Beethoven and Mahler recordings will probably not hold up. His Bartók will be of interest when it can be properly heard. But the “New World” Symphony video is something I think will long attract attention.

This is a document of Dudamel at 26, appointed music director of the L.A. Philharmonic the week before and performing for a pontiff. The significance of the “New World” Symphony to a young man for whom the world is his oyster is apparent. And as we watch and listen to this marvelous performance, that world, for 45 fabulous minutes, is ours as well.

mark.swed@latimes.com