Posted Apr 12, 2007, 12:30 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 6,465
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^ I saw the following about that bit of news, & have to say it may make up for what probably will happen this Saturday, when a certain town in the US is announced as this country's choice to host the 2016 Olympics. Either that, or it will be a case of rubbing salt in the wound.
Quote:
‘Say it isn't so' music fans lament
Gustavo Dudamel's triumphant local debut makes pain of losing him worse
April 10, 2007
BY ANDREW PATNER
It was a heartbreak of record speed and strength. Faster than the collapse of the ’69 Cubs. As sad as the sight of the tall girl in ninth grade dancing with that other guy. Thursday night at Symphony Center, Gustavo Dudamel, the sensational 26-year-old Venezuelan conductor, made his Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut with a performance of Mahler’s First Symphony that grabbed the audience members by the shoulders and lifted them collectively from their seats. The reviews were once-in-a-decade raves.
The phenomenon was repeated on Friday afternoon and Saturday evening. Backstage was jumping with well-wishers, agents, heads of other orchestras and the CSO’s own musicians as it hadn’t since Daniel Barenboim’s farewell concerts or Georg Solti’s retirement as music director.
The Internet was abuzz and speculation was rife that the CSO might be able to work out some arrangement with Dudamel — perhaps a guest conductor role, some residencies, maybe even music director, a daring risk that would have captured the imagination of the classical music world.
And then Easter Sunday morning, the news broke. Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed had the scoop: Esa-Pekka Salonen, a former wunderkind himself, would leave the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s music director post in two years and would be succeeded by none other than Gustavo Dudamel.
“No!” read several e-mails I received from CSO musicians. “I read this story — and wept,” wrote a major donor to the orchestra. “Come on, this is Easter Sunday, not April Fools’ Day,” WFMT’s morning host Lisa Flynn said when I called her with the news during her shift.
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