How Gustavo Dudamel's Mahler festival grooves for young and old

Some months earlier opening his six-week Mahler Project successful 2012, a 30-year Gustavo Dudamel said helium was studying similar crazy.

Just earlier the archetypal performance connected Jan. 13 that year, helium said, “It’s crazy,” the craziness being that helium was astir to effort something beyond reason: performing each 9 completed Mahler symphonies and the archetypal question of the 10th with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela implicit 3 weeks successful L.A. and past instantly repeating it successful Caracas.

Asked however helium felt astatine the end, a near-delirious Dudamel could hardly blurt retired “craaaazzzy.”

The Mahler Project whitethorn person been crazy-making, but it was not without a definite only-in-L.A. precedence and panache. For much than 3 decades — opening astatine a clip erstwhile unrecorded performances of these symphonies, each a psychical experience, were not commonplace — the section Mahler Society held yearly “Mahlerthons.” From 8 a.m. to midnight, recordings of everything Mahler were played. You besides could prime up a grey Mahler sweatshirt and a “Mahler Grooves” bumper sticker.

With sublime craziness, Dudamel is successful the midst of different Mahler task with the L.A. Phil successful Walt Disney Concert Hall that runs done Sunday. “Mahler Grooves” whitethorn not beryllium arsenic crazy-making for Dudamel, who leads lone 2 implicit symphonies, the Fifth and the Seventh. But neither this now-44-year-old mature Mahlerian nor the L.A. Phil person mislaid their audacity. Sunday, portion the Oscars went connected for astir 4 hours, a 10-hour Mahlerthon, the archetypal anyplace ever, took spot astatine Disney Hall.

Six section pupil orchestras — high-schoolers on with assemblage and conservatory musicians — performed movements from Symphonies Nos. 1, 3 and 4. The Second and Sixth were played complete. Hardly kids’ stuff, these symphonies beryllium immoderate of the top philharmonic and affectional challenges for adjacent the top nonrecreational orchestras. But connected Sunday, with astonishing enthusiasm and unbounding expertise, much than 500 young radical from each implicit L.A. devoted themselves to finding, from Mahler’s example, the meaning of life.

The time began with the L.A. Phil’s YOLA, 150 young musicians strong, playing the past question of Mahler’s First nether Alan Mautner. A snafu with integer tickets kept maine from reaching my spot successful time, truthful I ended up proceeding the show successful the hall’s upstairs listening room, wherever the dependable is vibrantly funneled straight up from the signifier but wherever you can’t spot the orchestra. No matter, the exhilaration was contagious.

The Intercity Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles, conducted by Charles Dickerson III, took connected the immense duty of the archetypal and past movements from Mahler’s Third, his longest symphony. This ample ensemble of teens tackled Mahler’s hunt for bid and commonality among the chaos and quality of quality and our ain affectional chaos, with inspirational tenacity.

Santa Monica High School’s Chamber Orchestra brought a lovely, lyric sheen to Mahler’s drawstring orchestra statement of Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” drawstring quartet. The school’s Symphony Orchestra adjacent turned to the archetypal question of Mahler’s Fourth. So suavely blase was the show led by Jason Aiello, I had to blink a fewer times to punctual myself these were precocious schoolhouse students.

In the evening, Neal Stulberg led an intense, brilliant, riveting show of Mahler’s astir agitated symphony, the 80-minute Sixth (known arsenic the “Tragic”). Later, the Colburn Orchestra ended the agelong time with a blazing show of Mahler’s Second Symphony, “The Resurrection,” conducted with flare by Earl Lee. Madison Leonard and Kayleigh Decker were the 2 moving vocal soloists, portion members of the Los Angeles Master Chorale provided a blazing ending.

It truthful happened that portion fractional the Master Chorale was ringing the rafters of 1 of the world’s top performance halls, resurrecting Mahler’s connection of anticipation for a caller generation, the different fractional of the chorus was stuck successful 1 of the world’s astir dismal acoustical auditoriums giving mournful solace to the Oscars for its “In Memoriam” conception successful Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre.

There is much value to this than meets the ear. L.A., and Hollywood successful particular, boast a unsocial Mahler heritage. It whitethorn beryllium good known that galore German emigrees to L.A. were intimately associated with Mahler. They included conductors (Otto Klemperer and Bruno Walter), composers (notably Arnold Schoenberg) and writers (Thomas Mann), arsenic good arsenic Mahler’s widow, composer Alma Mahler, and their daughter, sculptor Anna Mahler.

But it turns retired that 2 different émigré composers, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Max Steiner, who were some influenced by Mahler, created the modern symphonic movie score. And what amended Hollywood transportation than Anna Mahler (whose bust of Klemperer is 1 of the archetypal things you spot entering the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion) adjacent appeared connected Groucho Marx’s vigor show, “You Bet Your Life.”

Mahler, indeed, grooves. I don’t cognize whether Dudamel has pasted a bumper sticker connected his car (they’re for merchantability astatine Disney Hall’s shop), but his mastery of Mahler has grown immensely. He opened the festival with “Blumine,” which Mahler primitively intended arsenic a question of the First Symphony but eliminated successful a aboriginal revision, and the Adagio from his Tenth Symphony, his last.

Together, this bloom of a opening and an end-of-life meditation created a sensation of unthinkable richness. Dudamel forced nothing. Mahler seemed to conscionable be. Last week with the Seventh, “Song of the Night,” Dudamel reveled successful soundscapes, capturing with startling immediacy Mahler’s weirdly evocative nighttime euphony surrounded by calamity and triumph, resonating overwhelmingly successful fire-ravaged L.A.

But thing symbolizes L.A. resilience similar the Mahlerthon. Five 100 young musicians can’t beryllium wrong.