Orange County Register

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Review: The 28-year-old conductor leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a pair of Mozart symphonies and, with Gil Shaham, Berg’s Violin Concerto. The Orange County Register, Nov. 20, 2009. SEE SLIDE SHOW 

Gustavo Dudamel, who led his third program, and ninth concert, of the month with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Thursday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, is a traditionalist. A meat and potatoes man. Well, at least some of the time. For all the fuss surrounding the new music director (“60 Minutes” is apparently preparing a third segment on him; they didn’t do one on his predecessor), he is in many ways a throwback to another era.

The program paired the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Alban Berg, exemplars of the First and Second Viennese Schools, respectively. It was a good program, good to see Mozart given the place of honor he deserves. Mozart’s Symphony No. 38, “Prague,” and Symphony No. 41, “Jupiter,” stood as bookends to the agenda. In between these twin peaks came Berg’s Violin Concerto, with Gil Shaham as soloist.

Dudamel’s Mozart is Old School (not a bad thing in this listener’s book). It ignores virtually everything we have learned about historical music practice in the last 50 years. It neither handles the music with kid gloves (holding it at a polite distance) nor with an analytical scalpel (treating it as an example of ancient practices). It lives, it breathes, it sings. It is human. It is no nonsense.

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