Alegria
The Dude clinched it! And he did it an hour before our boys in Chavez Ravine.
Really, Gustavo Dudamel and the L.A. Philharmonic brought the house down Saturday night. He did it while conducting more than a hundred South L.A. students who'd feverishly rehearsed Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" this summer through the L.A. Phil's new youth orchestra program. The performance wasn't up to par to the discriminating classical music ear but it was a great achievement given the cards they were dealt. And it was a seed planted in the arid working-class flatlands.
Dudamel had us 18 thousand people in his pocket leading the white-tuxed L.A. Phil musicians in Beethoven's 9th Symphony. The composition is a plea to leave divisions and to embrace thy neighbor in brotherly love. It sounds to me like the composer's last gasp, knowing the end is near, and calling out what's important.
And did I tell you the Bowl's closest seats, the Pool Circle, the seats usually occupied by the crema y nata de la sociedad, nestled students' family members?
It was an unusual concert night at the Hollywood Bowl in several other respects, from the Mexican cowboy hats, yellow-blue-red Venezuelan shirts and hats, and a kaleidoscope of Spanish accents that joined French, Russian, and Armenian hovering toward the brush in the Hollywood Hills arm in arm.
Lots of kids in the audience kept the night from feeling stuffy. At one point, after the end of a movement, a toddler's sweet voice of approval was a fitting transition to the symphony's next part.
The L.A. Phil played up the night's inherent biculturalism and bilingualism. The 9th's German lyrics were translated in subtitles on the Bowl's large video screens. So for this moment Spanish was given its due. "Joy, beautiful spark of the gods." Was followed by "Alegria, Hermosa Luz Divina." "This kiss for all the world." "Un beso para todo el mundo."
