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A Dudamel Preview: Plenty of Razzle, Short on Dazzle
At Carnegie Hall, showy interpretations that rarely broke through to a deeper level.
Nine months after being anointed the next music director of the New York Philharmonic and two years before he officially takes over, Gustavo Dudamel is in the middle of an extended cross-country procession, zigzagging toward his new post like the Olympic torch. Which brings up a second paradox: Dudamel always seems most energized with scores full of rhythmic rattle and percussive excitement, pieces that demand pinpoint exactitude and a knack for assembling large, coherent structures out of jagged shards. Like a hyperactive guide who can’t focus on any one sight long enough to explain what it is, the piece is constantly drawing the ear from flutter to blast, from ethereal haze to remorseless thumps, to scraps of Ginastera-like folklore.
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