How Do You Solve a Problem Like Gustavo?

 

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Back in April, 2022, I reviewed a San Francisco Symphony program led by guest conductor Gustavo Dudamel, the outgoing music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. That program consisted of Mozart's Prague Symphony and Mahler's 5th. Among other things, I wrote:

The [Mahler] Adagietto lacked sinew and a sense of the underlying structure of the movement and seemed not just slow, but laggard. This was an issue for the entire work: Dudamel seemed to be conducting moment by moment, without illuminating the larger structure of each movement and the symphony as a whole. While his conducting wasn’t metronomic, he lacked an organic sense of the underlying pulse of each movement and thus lacked the kind of graceful rhythmic flexibility within a phrase that good Mahler conducting needs. And he too often overlooked subtle dynamic changes as well.

Dudamel was back at SFS tonight, for this program:

• Gabriela Ortiz, Kauyumari
• Gonzalo Grau, Odisea, concerto for cuatro (a four-string Venezuelan guitar)
• Brahms, Symphony No. 2

I liked the Ortiz a great deal; it is a bouncy, not-exactly-minimalist work built around a theme from an earlier work of hers that in turn is based on a traditional story from Mexico. I'd love to hear more of her music.

Odisea was a lot of fun, with stunningly great playing by cuatro soloist Jorge Glem. I would not call it deep; I found it formally amorphous and somewhat episodic, but I'm also not sure that matters. It had plenty of color and big tunes. Glem is a marvel, a virtuoso, and fit splendidly into the changes of mood over the course of the 25-minute concerto. His encore was a quick trip through excerpts from a bunch of classical works and other tunes, and, again, great fun. I'd go see him play solo or in a small group any day.

And now the bad news: some things never change. The first two movements of the Brahms were Not Good. What I said in 2022 about lack of sinew and a sense of underlying structure applied here as well. The opening of the first movement dragged; what followed was episodic and seemingly boneless. The second movement was much the same. Brahms was, beyond a doubt, a structure guy, and if the listener have no sense of where the music is going, well, the conductor is doing something wrong. Brahms's phrases tend to be big, and Dudamel made them feel small. There was not much flow from phrase to phrase, either.

I don't know what happened between the second and third movements, but...the third was pretty good and the fourth movement worked really well. It was propulsive; it had direction; it had shape. I also must mention some particularly beautiful and elegant playing by principal horn Robert Ward, who is retiring at the end of the year. I am going to miss him.

Elsewhere:

• Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle, who liked the Brahms better than I did.
• David Bradman, SFCV.