{"id":4217,"date":"2026-10-01T23:03:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T03:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=4217"},"modified":"2026-10-01T23:03:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T03:03:21","slug":"dudamels-mahler-and-the-classical-music-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2026\/10\/dudamels-mahler-and-the-classical-music-challenge.html","title":{"rendered":"Dudamel’s Mahler and the Classical Music Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Gustavo Dudamel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Having attended all eight programs Gustavo Dudamel conducted last season as the New York Philharmonic\u2019s Music Director Designate (in order to turn them into a piece<\/a><\/strong> for The New York<\/em> Review of Books<\/em> pondering the perilous state of American  orchestras), I had some idea what to expect from his Mahler Fifth these past two weeks. And the performance last Tuesday night ran true to form. There was a lot to think about \u2013 not all of it Mahlerian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I own an unusual score of this particular Mahler symphony. It is densely annotated. That\u2019s because 46 years ago it sat in my lap during a New York Philharmonic rehearsal led by Klaus Tennstedt. Tennstedt was certainly one of the major Mahler conductors of his generation. Onstage (and also offstage, I am told), he looked a nervous wreck. His guest appearances with the Philharmonic furnished a rare oasis during the long desert years of Zubin Mehta\u2019s music directorship. Tennstedt\u2019s music-making trembled with feeling, and never moreso than when Mahler was the composer. I would call his Mahler readings \u201cMahlerian.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Klaus Tennstedt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

So listening to Dudamel\u2019s Mahler 5 with Tennstedt\u2019s Mahler 5 before my eyes was a schizoid experience. What I was hearing was mellifluous. What I was reading was fractured and eruptive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A typically Tennstedt instruction, repeated many times: \u201cPlease, it\u2019s so difficult. Play more softly<\/em> but with more vibrato<\/em>!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rehearsing the first movement\u2019s march tattoo: \u201cThe triplets must always be late.\u201d  He wanted a sharper rhythmic contour (which he could only fitfully obtain).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rehearsing the opening of the second movement, marked by Mahler fortissimo<\/em> \u201cwith greatest vehemence\u201d \u2013 \u201cCome on. Three times more! [i.e., three times louder].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rehearsing the Adagietto: \u201cMore intensity, please! But not so loud! One line!\u201d \u201cRelax your right arm. With the left (i.e., the vibrato): the most intensity you have.\u201d He urged the strings to forgo convention and attempt \u201cfree bowing.\u201d \u201cAll long notes \u2013 change bow! Change! Change so you don\u2019t get caught with too little bow left! You have to get used to it. In the middle<\/em> of the note you can change.\u201d \u201cChange the bow! Free bowing! Don\u2019t bother to write it in your parts!!!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His general instructions, imparted at the start, included: \u201cThe Fifth Symphony is the most exciting [Mahler] symphony with dynamics \u2013 the dynamics are always exaggerated. In this <\/em>symphony. <\/em>Not the Seventh! Not the Ninth! The whole symphony!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Random urgings: \u201cExcuse me. That\u2019s a big problem with this symphony. Everybody must give the greatest<\/em> fortissimo.\u201d \u201cToo loud but not enough expression.\u201d \u201cLook:  Mahler has written \u2019molto crescendo.\u2019\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s very tiring \u2013 but don\u2019t forget any of the accents, please.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The orchestra did not respond communally. Some individuals were rebellious. Philip Myers, the principal horn, requested that Tennstedt permit him to ignore Mahler\u2019s subito forte<\/em> [suddenly loud] in a third movement solo. Tennstedt insisted. When the horns were asked to use mutes, they shot back: \u201cWhat mutes do you want?\u201d \u201cYou know your instruments,\u201d Tennstedt curtly replied. Rehearsing a passage for pianissimo<\/em> cellos, Tennstedt heard piano<\/em> cellos. He expressed incredulity that the section could not play more softly. And so it went. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though I did not attend any of Dudamel\u2019s Philharmonic rehearsals of Mahler\u2019s Fifth, I am sure that nothing remotely comparable occurred. For one thing, his concept of the piece is far less tortured than Klaus Tennstedt’s. For another: he and the players are one. And the audience can sense this.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly Dudamel\u2019s arrival in New York has been hyped by the Philharmonic and hyped in the press. But a performance like his Mahler 5 makes the hype seem tolerable (almost). Not because it\u2019s a paramount reading, but because Dudamel fastens on the exuberance of the work, its ultimate gusts of positive energy, and makes them his own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

                                    ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After writing all that, I went to AI to find the date of Tennstedt\u2019s performance \u2013 and discovered that it could be revisited on youtube. In fact, one reason I attended this particular rehearsal is that I couldn\u2019t make the concert \u2013 so I have just listened to  Klaus Tennstedt\u2019s June 18, 1980, New York Philharmonic performance of Mahler\u2019s Fifth for the first time. You can, too \u2013 it\u2019s sitting right here<\/a><\/strong> and here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it is colossal. Everything Tennstedt begged for somehow transpired. Phil Smith nails those delayed triplets in the trumpet tattoo. Philip Myers dutifully plays his subito forte<\/em>. The previous resistance of the players is forgotten \u2013 they are transformed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experiencing the physical and spiritual fatigue of the symphony\u2019s opening march \u2013 an existential trek only Mahler could have composed \u2013 I discover myself glimpsing Christ bearing his heavy cross up the Calvary slope. A representative detail: at measure 306, where Mahler asks flutes and oboes to instantaneously sink from forte<\/em> to pianissimo, <\/em>the Philharmonic administers a jab of sorrow..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The symphony\u2019s central scherzo (there are five movements), in which Dudamel charms, is for Tennstedt heavy-footed; it lapses organically into moments of rumination or calamity. In the famous Larghetto for strings (coming fourth), with its harp aroma, Tennstedt instantly attains a worshipful gravitas (a plausible rendering of Mahler\u2019s adoration of his wife).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plan of this symphony is necessarily controversial. It begins tragically, with funeral strains and (in movement two) seismic eruptions. The scherzo is longer but lighter. The Larghetto can be streaked with perfume or with anguish. The finale builds to an exuberant chorale chased by a giddy coda. A singularly plausible reading is offered by Karol Berger in his indispensable Mahler\u2019s Symphonic World<\/em> (2025), which I have elsewhere<\/a><\/strong> extolled. Berger writes: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe symphony\u2019s last word is ironic, mocking even, certainly not pompously triumphant. What I mocked here is a whole tradition of victorious symphonic scenarioes epitomized by Beethoven\u2019s Fifth  . . Mahler pokes this tradition in the ribs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe finale as a whole, however, does more than undermine a hallowed symphonic tradition. It puts into question Mahler\u2019s own past. For the first time, the composer writes a symphony that does not aim at transcendence and sublimity but that accepts and embraces the comic immanence of the earthly existence. . . . The formal complexity and motivic density of the Rondo-Finale is more than sufficient to match those of parts 1 and 2 (i.e., movements 1, 2, and 3). The movement is not lightweight, but it does undermine the ponderousness of the pesante<\/em> apotheosis. This is not its shortcoming; it is, rather, its point. . . . the failure of transcendence becomes the aesthetic experience. . . . In his Fifth Symphony Mahler withdrew for the first time his earlier bet on transcendent hope without forgetting the suffering that such hope was meant to answer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this is the reading that Tennstedt clinches. The heavy moments yield intimations of serenity.\u00a0\u00a0The bucolic moments retain weight. The trajectory of every movement is tidal. As for the free bowing he begged for in that rehearsal: I cannot glimpse this towering performance with my eyes, but what my dazzled ears perceive \u2013 especially in the climaxes of the Larghetto \u2013 is a seamless parabola of sound mounting from pianissimo to fortissimo and back again. And I hear string players digging in with heedless abandon.\u00a0(For the past\u00a0three months in this space I have yearned to see and hear the young violinists in today\u2019s American orchestras \u201cfeel it.\u201d )<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A conductor of my acquaintance (who was not at Dudamel\u2019s Mahler performances, but heard about them) comments: \u201cCelebrity is the ultimate currency. It\u2019s not always a bad thing.\u201d He is rooting for Dudamel because he is rooting for the future of classical music in competition with screens, cell phones, and AI. I attended last Tuesday\u2019s concert with my daughter. She is no newcomer to concerts, but was hearing Mahler\u2019s Fifth for the first time. Not only was she enthralled; I am sure this was a Dudamel experience she will urge upon her friends. And they will love it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having attended all eight programs Gustavo Dudamel conducted last season as the New York Philharmonic\u2019s Music Director Designate (in order to turn them into a piece for The New York Review of Books pondering the perilous state of American  orchestras), I had some idea what to expect from his Mahler Fifth these past two weeks. And the performance last Tuesday night […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry","has-post-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-161","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4217"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4226,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4217\/revisions\/4226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}