The New York Philharmonic Orchestra announced late Tuesday afternoon the appointment of 42-year-old Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel from 2026 for a five-year term. How to analyze this not necessarily expected news?
The tectonics of the musical plates are going to be exciting to follow in the coming times. By nominating Gustavo Dudamel, the New York Philharmonic (NYPO) creates at the very least the buzzin a narrative immediately brandished by the New York Times : are we finally going to relive the Leonard Bernstein period?
“Lenny” was musical director only from 1958 to 1969, but the whole reputation, the “ branding », of the orchestra still feeds on this myth and fantasy. The orchestra is made up of cutting-edge musicians who have brilliantly gone through a long series of more or less successful appointments — Boulez, Mehta, Masur, Maazel — before two blunders, Alan Gilbert (for lack of being able to hook Muti) and Jaap van Zweden. The NYPO therefore recreates an association which announces that “something is going to happen”.
Mission accomplished
Basically, the surprise is not one. The NYPO had recruited Deborah Borda, the highest paid orchestra administrator in the world (well over a million dollars) a few years ago. She came from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where she shaped the Dudamel phenomenon. Perhaps the mandate of the board in New York was simply to bring Dudamel to New York! The career of Borda, now in his seventies, is crowned and she has just sold her finest “product”.
Because Dudamel will really have to prove in New York that he is the phenomenon that is claimed. He was certainly the most spectacular rocket in the musical world in his twenties, but his career in his thirties was much less dazzling than that of Yannick Nézet-Séguin or Andris Nelsons: he remained the “guru” of Los Angeles, but in Europe he was never considered when it came to choosing the future musical director of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra or the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He has so far left no significant or memorable recordings, which for a star is scanty. He was appointed director of the Paris Opera by a director who was immersed in the North American musical universe. In 2026, Dudamel will combine the positions in Paris and New York and abandon Los Angeles.
Whatever the artistic results, which will only be gauged around 2030, the nomination awakens healthy competition in the ” top 5 American that Yannick Nézet-Séguin in Philadelphia, where he was renewed until 2030, is largely dominating against Boston with Nelsons; in Cleveland with Welser-Möst; in Chicago, encrusted with Muti; and at the NYPO, immersed in a no man’s land with Van Zweden.
It’s also very good for Montreal, because Rafael Payare, a friend of Dudamel, has just set up an alliance in California with him and Esa-Pekka Salonen for a new music festival. Montreal, with Payare and Nézet-Séguin, and New York, with Dudamel and Nézet-Séguin, are going to be two exciting cities to compare.
We obviously also come to a deeper tectonic, that is to say the attribution of the post of Chicago (Manfred Honeck, Christian Thielemann?) and the succession of Dudamel in Los Angeles. Will Rafael Payare change Californian orchestra? Unless I’m mistaken, her contract with San Diego ends in 2026. But the pressure will be strong in Los Angeles to see a woman reach the podium.