Mark Swed (Classical Music Critic, Los Angeles Times) refers to Dr. Gustavo Dudamel, as the Venezuelan-born conductor was recently awarded an honorary doctorate from the Juilliard School. He writes, “New York welcomes Gustavo Dudamel as its future conductor with an honorary doctorate from Juilliard and with cheers after Philip Glass’ Symphony No. 11.”
After triumphantly bringing the Los Angeles Philharmonic to Coachella, Gustavo Dudamel is taking his biggest bite so far out of the Big Apple. He is in town for a three-week New York Philharmonic residency. He has devised two ambitious programs to close the orchestra’s season in David Geffen Hall and will then be the big attraction for thousands of New York picnickers at free New York Philharmonic parks concerts throughout the boroughs. In the meantime, Dr. Dudamel picked up an honorary doctorate Saturday from the Juilliard School.
A welcome mat doesn’t get more welcoming than that for a conductor, and this is someone who has yet no official title with the orchestra. The three main “People of the New York Philharmonic” featured on the orchestra’s website are pianist Yuja Wang (artist in residence), Matías Tarnopolsky (newly appointed president and chief executive) and Alec Baldwin (radio series host).
In September, Dudamel becomes music and artistic director designate. A year later, having completed 17 seasons as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he takes charge of the country’s oldest and most celebrated orchestra.
But who’s counting days, months or years? From the moment Dudamel walked on stage at Geffen Hall to begin the dress rehearsal of his first concert of the series last week, there could be no question that it’s his show.
The orchestra has become fully Dudamel-branded, his image plastered everywhere you look. The talk of the town is that a music-director-designate-to-be has already transformed one of the world’s great orchestras, which is said to be playing at a new level and with a new sound.
New Yorkers still take pride in not being easily hoodwinked. The press glorifies Dudamel as the next Leonard Bernstein one minute and looks for flaws anywhere it can find them the next. But there is something in the air that even an outsider could feel at the rehearsal, which was open to donors and press interlopers. Dudamel simply seemed, without ostensibly trying, to belong. He knew exactly what to do and how to do it. When he asked the players for something, an orchestra famed for being difficult responded instantly.
But Dudamel was doubtlessly trying to belong. The program, composed of nothing he has performed elsewhere, was meant to be a tribute to the New York Philharmonic. He began by pairing the first work the 183-year-old orchestra had ever commissioned with a premiere of a startling new commission. After intermission, he introduced the largest and most robust of the recent symphonies by the city’s best-known composer, a veritable icon — Philip Glass — to an orchestra that had done its best to ignore for half a century.
With orchestra and audience in his hands, Dudamel had yet another triumph. The New York Times called this program a love letter to New York. [. . .]
Dudamel’s performance of Symphony No. 11 thus became the first New York Philharmonic attempt at a Glass symphony. (He’s written 15, and the L.A. Phil commissioned the 12th.) The 11th has everything audiences and orchestra players are said to dread. It is long (40 minutes), orchestrally big-boned in the manner of Bruckner and echt-Glass in its repetitions and romantic effusions.
But in an act of remarkable conductorial persuasion, Dudamel emphasized Glass’ talent for orchestral go-with-the-flow magnificence to blow the audience away. The crowd stood en masse and cheered the frail 88-year-old composer seated on the first tier. [. . .]
For full review, see https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2025-05-29/gustavo-dudamel-new-york-philharmonic-philip-glass
[Photo above by Brandon Patoc / New York Philharmonic: “Gustavo Dudamel gestures to composer Philip Glass to take a bow after conducting the first New York Philharmonic performance of Glass’ Symphony No. 11 in David Geffen Hall.”]