Over in Los Angeles, the whole city is gearing up for the arrival of Gustavo Dudamel as the new music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic next week. Not even Berlin's welcome for Simon Rattle when he took over the Philharmoniker in 2002 comes close to the red carpet that LA has rolled out for Dudamel, already the most hyped appointment in recent classical music history. LA's buses, billboards, and concert halls shimmer with neon-lit messages of welcome for the world's most famous Venezuelan (he's now one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world), and the LA Phil's website hums with Dudamel previews and videos. There's some brilliant footage of him rehearsing the youth orchestra that was set up in his honour, YOLA, in which he takes the young players I saw in November last year through the finale of Beethoven's 5th Symphony – an object lesson in how not to patronise young music students but to treat them and the music with the respect and focus they deserve. As Charlotte Higgins has also noted, there's even a Dudamel-inspired conducting game at laphil.com, where you get to cue the LA Phil - sort of - in the Dude's performance of the March to the Scaffold from Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. You can score yourself too – I managed 7,600, not nearly enough to top the leaderboard, with nearly 10,000.
Anyway, as a corrective to all the hype, have a look at Mark Swed's article in yesterday's Los Angeles Times, a bucket of cold water over the worst excesses of Dudamania. Swed's point is that all the claims made for Dudamel as musical and social saviour are, simply, impossible for him to fulfil – as well as potentially putting him under unsustainable pressure as a musician. Whether Swed's right or the hype has it, only time will tell – starting with Dudamel's Beethoven 9 from Hollywood Bowl, which you can watch live as part of a four-hour long gala at the LA Phil's website on Saturday.
