The obvious fact that Gustavo Dudamel is a hard act to follow is something that has been concerning for the Los Angeles Philharmonic the last two and a half years. Dudamel has but one more season as music and artistic director before moving on to the New York Philharmonic, and the search for a new music director remains ongoing, the L.A. Phil clearly carefully taking the time to get it right.
In the meantime, interesting, predictable and unpredictable, stuff happens as it has lately at the Hollywood Bowl. Dudamel made the hard-act-to-follow business nearly an impossible act to follow during the first of what was supposed to be his two weeks at the Bowl this month. He had to cancel his second week, which was to have featured the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, thanks to new U.S. government travel restrictions for the Venezuelan orchestra.
The L.A. Phil filled in with two talented conductors who were Dudamel fellows and are now enjoying prospering careers, Elim Chan and Gemma New. But there were further disappointments. Yuja Wang, who was scheduled to appear with Bolívars in Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, canceled, and the world premiere of Arturo Marquez Concerto Trumpet No. 2, which the L.A. Phil commissioned, had to be postponed.
But perhaps the greatest challenge of all was living up to Dudamel’s astonishing performance of Mahler’s First Symphony at his second Bowl concert. Dudamel has conducted this symphony many times in L.A., including at his first concert in Walt Disney Concert Hall as the orchestra’s music director. That youthfully exciting and at times wild 2009 performance by the 28-year-old Dudamel attracted international attention and can be revisited on DVD.
At the Bowl this time, Dudamel reached new and surprising interpretive depths. There was a sense of being in the moment in every detail. There was an electric connection between Dudamel, the orchestra and the large audience that expressed its love for Dudamel, chanting “Gustavo! Gustavo!”
The next two evenings at the Bowl, when Dudamel accompanied a screening of “Jurassic Park” with the score performed live by the L.A. Phil, demonstrated just how much John Williams makes the movie. For Dudamel, there is no equal anywhere to this combination of orchestra, audience, opportunities and venue, and he seemed to very much know that during his brief week in town.
For Chan’s program a few nights later, she led a colorful, lively evening of Tchaikovsky (the Violin Concerto with James Ehnes as soloist), Britten (Four Sea Interludes from “Peter Grimes”) and Stravinsky (“Firebird” Suite). For some time, Chan has been rumored to be a candidate in the L.A. Phil’s music director search. She has become a regular guest conductor and opened the Bowl season last summer. Audiences respond to her verve and so do the players. All of that came across at the Bowl. She returns to Disney in January.
Wang’s cancellation, however, meant another hard act to follow. Two years ago, the pianist and Dudamel presented a Rachmaninoff festival at Walt Disney Concert Hall that resulted in a bestselling and well-deserved award-winning recording of the composer’s four piano concertos and “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini.” The set also proved direct competition with the widely hailed one by the Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov with the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
This week at the Bowl is Rachmaninoff week, with Trifonov performing two concertos (Nos. 2 and 3) and British conductor Daniel Harding leading the Second Symphony. A 22-year-old Trifonov made his L.A. debut in 2013 at the Bowl in Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto. A dozen years later the Russian pianist who now lives in New York is a star whose playing can be compared with Rachmaninoff’s own.
Rachmaninoff played his Second Concerto at the Hollywood Bowl in 1942. Suffering poor health, he had moved to Beverly Hills that May and died the following March. Before the concerto, Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” was performed as a “prayer for victory,” the U.S. having entered World War II.
Rachmaninoff, who by many accounts (and backed up by his recordings) was one of finest (some said the finest) pianists of his time, was reported to have been in superb form at the Bowl. His performance of his most famous and most romantic concerto was said to embody the seriousness of the times. Four years earlier, he had recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra, led by Leopold Stokowski. The sound is rough even for its time, but the playing comes from inside. You barely notice the extraordinary virtuosity, so natural is the sentiment.
I’ve never heard another pianist match that organic quality as closely as Trifonov does, and without ever restraining his own personality. Wang is the spine-tingling opposite, pure electricity, pure Yuja Wang, the closest we have today to Vladimir Horowitz, who happened to be Rachmaninoff’s Beverly Hills neighbor and favorite pianist.
Two weeks after the composer’s appearance at the Bowl, Horowitz played Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto in the amphitheater, and Rachmaninoff famously greeted him afterward backstage by saying that Horowitz played the killer concerto exactly the way he wanted to hear it.
The Rachmaninoff recordings of Dudamel and Wang remain preferable but not for the soloists, both of whom are extraordinary and authentic with no need to compete. Trifonov is undercut, though, by ostentatious conducting, whereas Dudamel and Wang jibe. For what it’s worth, Wang also made her Hollywood Bowl debut with a Rachmaninoff concerto (No. 3) and a famous little orange dress that together helped launch her stellar career.
Tuesday at the Bowl, Harding sensitively supported Trifonov, allowing space for the essence of his playing. A little Stokowski-like pizzazz that accompanied Rachmaninoff’s recording might not have hurt in the long Second Symphony, but even so, this was, like Chan’s concert, a fulfilling Bowl evening.
These concerts give hope and reaffirm that life goes on. All acts, no matter the challenge, must be followed.