No Evidence of Rivalry

For the first time, it occurred to me that Dudamel, widely regarded as the brightest rising star in classical music right now, was performing in a city that loves its orchestras passionately, and whose recent years have been highly unstable, podium-wise. We have no chance of acquiring Dudamel, in fact, having just inked the deal with another very young conductor, there’s a strong chance that we could be “set” for years to come. Yet, here he was, performing his heart out (sick with the flu, we found out the following day), with an orchestra whose reputation has grown dramatically in recent years, and who, for all intents and purposes, would be considered a “rival” of our Boston Symphony Orchestra. But, it wasn’t viewed that way. We in the audience had purchased our tickets well over six months ago, and had been staring at them frequently, in anticipation of the day when Gustavo would come to town. There was no evidence of rivalry, only that of camaraderie and community. It was the rough equivalent of seeing the Yankees dominate the field at Fenway Park, but to a stunning Boston ovation. That is what makes the performing arts so unique. In the arts, the guest arrives to thunderous applause, and accepts the love of a cross-country group of strangers (for some twenty minutes, in this case).

The level of excitement was amplified more than in most of the concerts I have attended in recent years, making certain audience archetypes more pronounced. There is the person who is an expert on the program’s pieces; the one who is an expert on the hall itself; and a personal favorite, the performer who has “worked with” everyone on stage, from conductor to oboist, and everyone in between. These eavesdropped conversations always give me something to listen to before the real show begins. And usually, I listen only hoping to glean something funny, as patrons try to impress their guests with knowledge they picked up from the program notes moments earlier (there was the guy at Handel & Haydn’s B Minor last fall, who got tripped up in his own theory about music theory’s related keys of B minor and D major).

But at this concert, I saw these blowhards in a new light, as bright as the matinee sun pouring through the hall’s windows, and very unexpected. I have never encountered an audience member who spoke ill of the performers on stage. And rarely about the people they’ve worked with, or watched previously. There was a professor behind me who said that whenever he goes to a concert nowadays, there ends up being at least one former student of his in the ensemble. Now, there was a bit of braggadocio in his statement. In just one sentence he had informed us that he goes to a lot of concerts, travels a lot, and is such a good teacher that his students go on to do great things. But nowhere in that comment did he imply that he was bothered that his students go on to the stages of the world while he has been relegated to a life of watching them. Furthermore, given that he is pleasantly surprised by the personnel listing in each program he reads, it implies, at least in part, that he does not maintain real relationships with his former students, to the point of knowing where they have ended up (or, better yet, to get comp tickets!), and therefore lives a life even further on the periphery, not quite the bridesmaid, but perhaps the photographer or caterer to a success story.

A Buttress Upon Which the Work Might Shine

Let’s revisit the comparison to a visiting sports team. At these events, you spend a large sum of money in the hopes that fully half the professionals you are watching will have a lousy day. And you hedge your bets that it will be your favorite team’s opponent doing the suffering. What’s more, you take a tremendous risk that you could go home feeling terrible yourself, depending on the degree to which you internalize and personalize your team’s success. How different, then,  is a trip to an opera, concert, or play. On these outings you have no hope other than a wonderful communal experience by all the professionals you are watching. No one has ever spent opera prices in the hopes that Tatyana gives the performance of her life while Onegin chokes just as marvelously. You go, instead, hoping for an experience in which the performers are so in sync with each other that a buttress forms, upon which the work may shine ever brighter than the last time you saw the same exact work performed live. At the arts, your team always wins.

Audience at LA Philharmonic concert at Symphony Hall

And this is part of the reason that Sunday’s performance moved us in the audience as much as it did. The members of the LA Philharmonic worked so in tune with each other as to bring out the best in Corigliano’s work, sending it to a level I never expected, in preparing with recordings beforehand. Even more impressive, the performance allowed each performer to raise the others on stage.

I can only imagine the length of the ovation had we known at the time that Dudamel was suffering from a flu so severe it would cause him to cancel this week’s engagements with the New York Philharmonic. In the hall, we never had a clue.