Review: Diplomatic Dudamel leads a fervent Beethoven charge at Disney Hall

In June 2006, nine months before Gustavo Dudamel was named the 11th music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, director Peter Sellars stood on the Walt Disney Concert Hall stage and addressed the leaders of America’s orchestras. We need Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, he said, not because it has a nice tune but because the composer demands in this work a radical agenda of social inclusion.

“Unless we mean it,” he said, “we should not be playing Beethoven, because it is unacceptable to make money off this guy who was struggling … against these damn autocracies and against this corruption and these power plays.” He also described Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture as a blueprint for a community blazing a path from oppression into the future.

For this year’s L.A. Phil opening night gala on Tuesday, Dudamel began his seventh season as the orchestra’s music director with the “Egmont” Overture and ended the program with the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth. This kicked off a two-week “Immortal Beethoven” festival, which will include two full cycles of Beethoven’s nine symphonies shared between the L.A. Phil and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela.

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There could be no overt political agenda, of course, on Tuesday. Galas are not community events (of which the L.A. Phil has many) but elite black-tie fundraisers that include a dinner and party in a fancy tent erected on Grand Avenue for the big arts spenders. You don’t want to alienate supporters who can hardly be expected to agree on the course of our country or how the world should be managed.

Indeed, that morning, Dudamel published an Op-Ed in The Times titled “Why I Don’t Talk Politics.” In it, he reconfirmed what he has told The Times before, that he cannot publicly take sides in the political chaos of his native Venezuela, to which he remains deeply attached. Not only is he music director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony, but he is also the public figurehead of El Sistema, a government program that provides music education (and considerable sustenance) to 700,000 children throughout the country.

Venezuelan politics are clearly such a vexing problem for Dudamel that he felt he had to put out a formal position paper of non-position. He does take sides, of course. His side is Sistema. And given that Sistema is a branch of the only government in which music education is a constitutional right, Dudamel is inevitably associated with a Venezuelan regime accused of corruption and human rights violations. (Dudamel is music director of the Bolívars but does not receive a salary.)

This brings us to Beethoven.

“Egmont” and the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth were fervently played Tuesday by the combined L.A. Phil and Bolívars. Dudamel told the audience that Beethoven’s universality is what matters. Complaining that the world today is increasing concerned with building barriers, Dudamel insisted we must build more bridges. Musicians from two countries that do not have friendly relations can play as one on stage, and joy can be spread widely.

Those two orchestras as one are really something. The relationship began when Dudamel first came to L.A. The Bolívars were a youth orchestra, and the L.A. musicians were mentors. As the Bolívars grew up, the Venezuelan and Angeleno players became colleagues and friends. The result is a super orchestra, one in which the Venezuelans physically enliven the Americans and the Americans elevate the Venezuelan sound to one of luminous beauty.

At that point, music speaks for itself, and we will have occasion this week to observe how Dudamel’s Beethoven interpretations have evolved greatly since he first conducted the Fifth Symphony with the Bolívars eight years ago. But there is still the question of Beethoven and human rights and the role of the performer.

Although Beethoven can be seen as the first truly revolutionary composer, in a musical and political sense, he had a complex history with revolution. Disillusioned by Napoleon, he became disillusioned by revolution in practice but ever more ardent in spirit.

To differentiate itself from the upcoming symphony cycle, the gala looked a little bit at Beethoven’s neglected theatrical side. The “Egmont” Overture was followed by seldom-performed excerpts from Beethoven’s incidental music from Goethe’s play. Egmont is a 16th century Dutch martyr fighting against Spanish oppression. Unable to save him, Klärchen, his fiancée, commits suicide. Goethe, who never lost his admiration for Napoleon, is on the side of freedom but dubious about civil war and martyrdom, though he approved of the way Beethoven ends with a blaze of glory.

Rachele Gilmore sang two short songs from the play with warmth and vigor. The actor Christoph Waltz read Egmont’s moving final speech in German (with English titles projected above) before being led to his execution. But the grandeur was in the music.

Selections from Beethoven’s only ballet, “The Creatures of Prometheus,” danced by Beckanne Sisk and members of the Barak Ballet, were treated as more conventional gala material. Beethoven, here, still identified with Napoleon as revolutionary. Melissa Barak’s storybook choreography did not.

Dudamel has paid his socially inclusive dues with the Ninth Symphony. He famously began his music directorship six years ago with a free Ninth at the Hollywood Bowl. This time his young solo quartet was composed of soprano Mariana Ortiz, mezzo-soprano J’nai Bridges, tenor Joshua Guerrero and bass Soloman Howard — all strong — and once again the Los Angeles Master Chorale was impressively on hand. But the finale only makes meaningful sense when it serves as the fulfillment of a profound symphonic argument, which will be the case with four full Ninths coming up.

This much, though, Dudamel accomplished on Tuesday. He made a lot of money out of the Ninth, and he conducted it as though he meant it.

A diplomatic Dudamel may not want to talk about Venezuelan politics. But if the best of Tuesday is an indication of his commitment to Beethoven’s demands of a radical agenda, he may not need to as the symphony cycle unfolds.

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