Dudamel delivers joyous Beethoven concert at the Greek
The classical music world boasts only a handful of real rock stars, and the gifted and charismatic young Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel is one of them. So there was a certain kind of inevitability about his appearance on Friday night at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, where other rock stars like Plácido Domingo and Yo-Yo Ma have gone before him.
He didn’t let the crowd down.
The dynamic rendition of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela capped the orchestra’s four-day residency at Cal Performances as part of the Berkeley Radical program. There were concerts, master classes, public symposia and so forth.
But this final concert — with the strains of Beethoven resounding into the open night air under a beautifully full white moon — brought the
requisite air of drama to the entire undertaking.
It also figured as part of the long-standing tradition of big, public performances of the Ninth, ones that wrap listeners in the all-encompassing embrace invoked in the Friedrich Schiller poem that forms the text for the concluding “Ode to Joy.” In addition to the thousands of concertgoers who filed into the Greek in person, the concert had an international audience, thanks to live-stream simulcasts on a host of media outlets including KDFC, KUSC, Univision and Medici.tv.
Naturally, what all those listeners heard was something different from what a concert hall atmosphere would have provided. This was not a Ninth notable for subtlety or precision of detail.
What the evening offered instead was a vivid sense of drama, of a far-reaching sweep that gathered listeners into the orchestra’s orbit and held them there, spellbound. The infectiously brisk rhythms and thunderous timpani explosions of the scherzo sounded especially vibrant, and in the slow movement, Dudamel balanced tender phrasing with a muscular throughline that kept the performance from dissipating into the Berkeley hills.
For the finale, the already oversize orchestra made way on stage for yet another army of musicians, giving this music an even more visceral impact. Choral duties were shared by members of the UC Chamber Chorus, the Pacific Boychoir Academy and the San Francisco Girls Chorus, all directed by Kevin Fox, and the sound they raised was glorious indeed.
The vocal solos were capably dispatched by soprano Mariana Ortiz, mezzo-soprano J’nai Bridges, tenor Joshua Guerrero and baritone Soloman Howard, whose lustrous call for a new and joyous strain of music was amply answered in the half hour that followed.
Joy, in fact, was the predominant theme throughout, not just in the choral finale but in the whole symphony. The audience’s long roar of approbation made that entirely clear.