Credit: Stephen Rabold
It’s become a Spring tradition for the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel to travel up the coast and perform at Santa Barbara’s Granada Theatre on the CAMA concert series. The May 28 concert was highly anticipated for a program that included something old in Beethoven’s seventh symphony, Op. 92 and something new in world premieres of works by composers Gabriella Smith and Ellen Reid – commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The adventure unfolds as Jean, an Uber driver dropped our Miroirs Ca reporter off in front of the theatre and asked who was performing. She was told it was Dudamel, almost had a fainting spell, said “I’m parking the car,” and ran to the box office to get the last available seat.
As for the rest of the audience, those that weren’t crying tears of joy or swooning experienced a brilliant display of great music in the hands of a great conductor who seems to release what’s inside of a composer’s mind, as was the case with Ellen Reid’s West Coast Sky Eternal for string orchestra. Dudamel was on top of every millisecond of the score which evoked a surreal hue of Wagnerian harmony with horns and hints of Brunnhilde waking up to the sun. Reid is an au courant composer with huge potential as indicated by the opera prism that received a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Many of Smith’s works are inspired by what could be called musical environmentalism such as Carrot Revolution and Breathing Forests. Lost Coast is a concerto for cello and orchestra with Gabriel Cabezas, a champion of new music. Unlike traditional concertos that have a cadenza where a soloist lets loose, Lost Coast was awash in swirling strings that mimic rushing water, peeps of brass, wood blocks and background-foreground resonance from cellist Cabezas. This work has a soundscape that conjures up elements of climate change and although it’s nice to be moved by something new and different – there comes the master Beethoven in a giant performance of the seventh symphony.
Dudamel blew the roof off with thunderous fire, inspiration and passion, conducting with gestures that included dancing, crouching, stretching on tip toes, pointing and jumping in neat, tight manner. He projected the second movement’s voicing and rhythmic intensity as if a beat ahead of Beethoven’s clockwork meter. This kind of anticipatory savvy describes what LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers recently said after being swept by Nicola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets, “He sees plays before they happen.” Dudamel is a visionary conductor who is totally in tune with Beethoven and as such, there is no equal to this kind of artistry – except in Zubin Mehta who will lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Mahler’s so-called Titan Symphony at the Granada Theatre in December. This concert ended with Jean driving our reporter home, at no charge, commenting that Dudamel conducted Beethoven’s seventh symphony by memory and adding, “I will never forget this day.” Hearing Gustavo Dudamel, who she had only know from news and People Magazine transformed her in an emotional sense. And that is what Beethoven’s glorious music is supposed to do – get us out of our miseries, our computers and soar with the angels.