Gustavo Dudamel: Can one man save classical music?

“It has been a long time since any cultural figure arrived in New York on such a wave of high expectations,” said Adam Nagourney in The New York Times. But conductor Gustavo Dudamel, having just completed a spectacularly successful 17-year run in Los Angeles, officially stepped into the role of music and artistic director of the storied New York Philharmonic early this month, and lovers of classical music are hoping that the former wunderkind can use his new perch to revive the genre as a force in American popular culture. At 45, Dudamel “might be the most famous conductor alive today,” said Joshua Barone, also in the Times, and he achieved that notoriety by bringing a democratic touch to his chosen field not seen since Leonard Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic. “This is not a job,” said Dudamel on his first full day occupying Bernstein’s old post. “It is a mission.”

Clearly, Dudamel is “ready to hit the ground running,” said Harry Rose in The Times (U.K.). He recently closed out his run atop the Los Angeles Philharmonic with four star-studded concerts at the Hollywood Bowl while teasing his next chapter by leading the New York Philharmonic as it accompanied the Muppets in a halftime show appearance at July’s World Cup final. During his first three weeks on the job, he’ll be guiding his new orchestra through seven different programs, and started that barrage with a Sept. 10 concert at Radio City Music Hall that mixed pieces by Bernstein, George Gershwin, Arturo Márquez, and Philip Glass with appearances by pop stars Lizzo and St. Vincent. More-traditional fare was prepared for Dudamel’s first concerts of the season at Lincoln Center’s new David Geffen Hall. However those come off, it’s clear that New York now has “a dynamic, populist conductor to match its dynamic, populist mayor.”

The pressure isn’t new for Dudamel, said Mattie Kahn in Vogue. He was just 23 when he won a prestigious conducting competition in Germany and classical music first greeted him as a savior. Ever since, he’s been “radiating the kind of star power more often associated with pop princes and athletes than classical musicians.” Like Bernstein, he’s “understood that classical music needed an evangelist and a face.” The music, he says, must be honest and fully felt, but if there’s a reason that high schoolers in New York shriek when he passes by and that there’s hope that classical music’s audience could get younger, “it’s Dudamel’s charisma, not his knack for interpreting Chopin.”

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