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Gustavo Dudamel - Pictures at an Exhibition: Music Box, the 12th of December
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An album released on the 2nd of December, in premiere at Radio România Muzical: recordings by conductor Gustavo Dudamel at the stand of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra with a 100% Russian programme by Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky.
This is the album with which Gustavo Dudamel celebrates his 10 years of collaboration with the renowned publishing house of Deutsche Grammophon (amounting to 51 released albums and DVDs) and comes as a prelude to the Vienna New Year Concert, which he'll be holding alongside the Vienna Philharmonic at the start of the year 2017. Yes, the renowned Vienna New Year Concert will be directed by Gustavo Dudamel. It is a first both for Dudamel, who will be conducting the Vienna New Year Concert for the first time, and for the Vienna Philharmonic, Dudamel being the youngest conductor to ever direct this concert along its 75-year history.
So the album released on the 2nd of December not incidentally includes, among others, a waltz: from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake Ballet.
Gustavo Dudamel is 35 years old and currently the musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela; for 12 years now, after he'd won 1st place at the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in Germany, Dudamel has been unfolding a top tier career, being a guest for the most important orchestras and opera theatres across the world. Let us look over his future agenda: the Vienna New Year Concert, a European tour with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela - in Vienna, at Musikverein he'll present Beethoven's complete symphonies in March 2017 - in June, a tour with the Berlin Philharmonic, culminating with his presence at the emblematic Waldbühne Concert in Berlin.
A conductor one could certainly call charismatic, suitable for the interpretation of Modest Mussorgsky's symphonic poem Night on Bald Mountain.
On this album one can find Gustavo Dudamel and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra's recordings from April 2016, at Musikverein. During a Sunday matinee on the 10th of April, Dudamel has directed, dressed in a casual outfit just like all the other musicians there, the Pictures at an Exhibition Suite by Modest Mussorgsky.
Certainly, the Pictures at an Exhibition are among the most renowned and bidding works of cultured music. And suitable for attracting children: Dudamel's major interest in promoting classical music among youngsters is well known, and the album you're listening to today has created around itself a trend in Vienna. Dudamel has met there the children participating in the Superar project in Vienna, a version of the El Sistema from Venezuela. They played together, took photographs, and these pictures are now included in the CD's booklet. A Viennese columnist has written, after the concert of April 2016 that he has a distinct word for the Pictures at an Exhibition conducted by Dudamel: maturity. Indeed, Dudamel is no longer just a young and enthusiastic conductor, but also a mature one, inspiring for the orchestra. The album can be listened to on Monday, the 12th of December, at 19.00, and again on Sunday, the 18th of December, at 13.05, or anytime on the "Vote for the Classical Music Album of 2016" campaign's website. You can vote for your favourite albums of 2016 only until the 15th of January 2017!
Translated by Adriana-Cãtãlina Grigore
MTTLC 1st year, University of Bucharest.