Conductor Gustavo Dudamel: ‘I was inside that sound’

“Normally I don’t drink during lunch, but today I’m relaxed,” Gustavo Dudamel says, as he orders us two glasses of a Navarra Chardonnay on the sommelier’s recommendation and we settle into the verdant surroundings of the Jardín del Alma at the Hotel Alma in springtime Barcelona.

Before now, I hadn’t considered the possibility that Dudamel — the 43-year-old superstar conductor and music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra — and The Dude, as he is widely known, might be two distinct personalities. But if Dudamel is known for his dynamism on the podium, for his capacity, ever since blasting on to the classical music scene in the 2000s as conductor of Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, to inspire audiences to a state of exaltation with his performances of Beethoven, Shostakovich, Mahler and more, then maybe The Dude is his chilled-out alter ego.

“This is an amazing place,” he says, rearranging his sunglasses on our immaculately laid table. The Alma itself, a study in luxe monochrome, is owned by a friend. Dudamel and his wife, the Spanish actor María Valverde, spend much of their time in Madrid but often stay here when work brings them to Catalonia.

“It’s a place where I have a lot of memories. I did a tour with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and they all came here to eat. The kitchen is not big but the quality of the food and the quality of the produce is very important . . . And I love this garden.”

We appear to be the only outdoor diners, seated in the centre of a jungle-like enclosure of lush shrubs and trees, parakeets and squabbling blackbirds. As our conversation turns to the arduous task of the menu, the maître d’ appears and rattles off a series of enticing-sounding dishes, to which we both nod our enthusiastic approval. “Salud!” we say, and touch glasses.

Dudamel may be in holiday mode but this is a working lunch. I’m keen to ask him about his much-hyped move to the New York Philharmonic, scheduled for 2026, Venezuela’s upcoming elections and the monstrous musicians of Hollywood’s imagination. But we begin with his imminent tour of Beethoven’s Fidelio, and the epiphany that inspired it.

Beethoven, Dudamel explains, has always been essential to his repertoire, but it was not until he had the chance to study some of his original scores, during a residency at Princeton University, that he started to think about the creative implications of the composer’s hearing loss.

“I was amazed by how chaotic [the scores] were, and the contrast between what’s there [on paper] and what you hear,” he says. “I thought, wow, here is something that goes beyond a purely artistic result. It does something — I don’t know if the word works in English — integrational, something that connects the hearing and non-hearing worlds.”

A small plate of bread, rubbed with olive oil, salt and tomatoes, has appeared. “Please,” he says, offering some my way. “This is very good — and warm, I think.” 

Right now, politics is a very complex thing to talk about. I’ve seen conversations end with a fight

He returns to Fidelio, and his fascination with Beethoven’s deafness, something he describes as “a superpower, even though it was very traumatic”. Initially, Dudamel intended to perform the opera alongside Venezuela’s White Hands Choir, a sign and gestural language choir, to mark the composer’s 250th birthday in 2020.

Covid scuppered these plans, but the idea flourished, expanded and finally came to fruition two years later, in a semi-staged performance by the LA Philharmonic, the White Hands Choir and actors from the Deaf West Theatre company — one that actively welcomed deaf audiences into LA’s Walt Disney Concert Hall for the first time. The production will be revived in LA this month, before Dudamel brings it to concert halls in Barcelona, Paris and London.

“It’s one of the most special projects that I have developed,” he says as plates, each containing a pair of artichoke hearts topped with hollandaise sauce and herbs, are put before us. “I remember, during rehearsals with the singers and actors, the singers started to phrase the music completely differently, following the phrasing of the sign language, and they were in tears . . . Art has that power . . . Art is not just entertainment. No, it has a message, and in this case, a message of integration.”

And, I suggest — given Fidelio’s theme of triumph over tyranny — a political one? Dudamel looks slightly uncomfortable and sidesteps the question, though politics is a subject we will return to.

“Right now, politics is a very complex thing to talk about,” he says. “I’ve seen conversations end with a fight, with people not talking, and the only way we can get out of this kind of crisis is to try to listen to each other and understand, even if we do not agree.”

An only child, Dudamel grew up in Barquisimeto, northern Venezuela, a city blighted by drugs and gang violence. His family was not well off, but both his parents were musical — his mother was a singing teacher, his father played the trombone in the local orchestra — and there are photographs of the infant Dudamel laughing as his father practises the Solfège scale (“do, re, mi” . . . ).

“I think my very first memory of experiencing music was at a family party,” he says. “My father was playing, my cousins were there, and at one point my godfather gave me the güiro and the maracas, ss-kta-ss-kta-ss . . . ” — he mimics a fast, percussive rhythm — “and I started to play . . . My father wondered who was playing the güiro. I remember I was really loving playing, and he said, ‘You have to study music.’”

We have made light work of four perfectly poached and unadorned spears of white asparagus. It’s time for our next course — a dainty bowlful of baby peas (“green caviar”, the waiter says) mixed with scraps of sautéed leeks and jamón ibérico — and a top-up of wine.

As a young child, Dudamel joined El Sistema (“The System”), the hugely influential public programme of musical education that was founded by the Venezuelan economist and musician José Antonio Abreu in 1975, and by the age of 11 he was excelling at the violin and as a conductor. In 2004, he was the surprise winner of the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition, and two years later was appointed principal conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra.

But it was his appearance conducting the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra (an ensemble of his El Sistema peers) at the 2007 BBC Proms that made headlines: after a sober performance of Shostakovich’s 10th symphony, the musicians returned to the stage wearing tracksuits in the Venezuelan colours and, like victorious Olympians, launched into a barnstorming programme dominated by South American music, with Dudamel — grinning madly, his wild mop of curly hair flying — leading the way.

Those curls may have since been tamed, and they are now salt and pepper in colour, but he retains his exuberance and his deeply dimpled face. He also maintains strong links with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra (as it is now known), and will conduct it on a European tour next year marking the 50th anniversary of El Sistema.

I ask if he ever wishes his childhood had been less intense, especially now he has a 13-year-old son of his own (with his first wife), but he rejects the suggestion. He describes Abreu as a father-figure who continues to inspire six years after his death: “My maestro was very demanding, he knew how to guide my talent, he was very tough, but I never felt pressure to be a top conductor.” 

El Sistema has been replicated around the world, but over the past decade Abreu’s programme has also faced criticism, including claims that it is cult-like and autocratic. “Of course, something successful will always be a wonderful target for criticism,” Dudamel says.

Of course, something successful [like El Sistema] will always be a wonderful target for criticism

Our discussion is interrupted by a growing sense of anticipation, as waiters assemble a side table, and a salt-baked sea bass is brought out by the chef — who cracks the toasted crust with no little ceremony, and serves us succulent portions of fish with chargrilled gem lettuce. 

We stick with the topic of Venezuela, a country that has experienced huge upheaval under Nicolás Maduro, who took over as president after the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013 (Dudamel was photographed several times alongside Chávez, and he conducted the national anthem at his funeral), and whose presidency has been characterised by corruption, censorship and repression.

The nation’s GDP, which stood at $373bn when Maduro took over, was just $92bn last year, and grinding poverty has sparked protests as well as one of the world’s largest international displacement crises.

Dudamel’s parents emigrated to Madrid a couple of years ago, but he has many friends and family members still in Venezuela. As July’s election looms, the situation there is “very hot, very tense”, he says.

In May 2017, having been notably reticent about Venezuelan politics, Dudamel broke his silence with a firmly worded statement that criticised the government, after a young violist and El Sistema member named Armando Cañizales was shot dead in Caracas while taking part in demonstrations against Maduro’s increasingly authoritarian regime.

Cañizales’s death galvanised the country’s musicians, who performed concerts in his memory and were photographed playing their instruments in the face of riot police. But it also revealed faultlines within El Sistema, which has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged children — many from barrios, or slum neighbourhoods — over the past five decades, but has benefited particularly from the generosity of the Chávez and Maduro governments.

Dudamel’s criticism resulted in him being banned from visiting the country. But in 2022, he returned on a well publicised trip that some saw as a capitulation, a win for Maduro. I ask if he was shocked by the changes he saw there.

“Look,” he says, and there is a long pause. “My country has a very deep political crisis, this is a fact. And this crisis is affecting the economy, the good health of the community, especially psychologically, because we have got to a very antagonistic point . . . Of course I saw a lot of imbalance, people don’t have access to things,” he continues. “But I saw people trying to get out of the crisis . . . [and] I saw a country alive.”

We stop to comment on the spectacular fish (“Be careful, there can be little bones”) and Dudamel steers the conversation on to safer ground. If he tends towards diplomacy and deflection when it comes to politics, he is vociferous about the power of music to enact social change.

“I went back to Barquisimeto, to my núcleo [El Sistema’s community hub] and you cannot imagine, hundreds and hundreds of children. When they saw me, ‘aaaaaaaah!’ it was the most beautiful thing, a wave of hope, it embraced my — cómo se dice? — all my values as a musician, as a human being, were in that building.”

Main course cleared, one of our ever-attentive waiters crunches over the gravel with the pudding menu. I happen to know that Dudamel has a sweet tooth. If the rumours are to be believed, it was a taste of cheesecake made by one of the New York Philharmonic’s cellists, Maria Kitsopoulos, that swung his decision to swap coasts.

He laughs. “Maria! She’s very famous now, because of her cheesecake. I’ve known her for many years, and she’s always been very lovely to me.” There’s no cheesecake on offer today so he chooses rum baba. “It’s good, but it’s strong.” I go for the coward’s option: pear tart.

Speculation about a possible move began when Deborah Borda, Dudamel’s great champion and the LA Philharmonic’s president and CEO, left to take up the reins of its New York rivals in 2017. Since the pandemic, and under the leadership of its unassuming music director, the Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden, the New York Philharmonic has struggled to regain prestige. What America’s oldest, grandest orchestra craved was stardust.

I saw people trying to get out of the [Venezuelan] crisis [and] I saw a country alive

Dudamel talks in vague terms about “enriching the personality of the orchestra” and his hopes for replicating the success of his social outreach programmes and Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA). His appointment is already paying dividends: in September, the orchestra announced it had received an endowment of $40mn from its co-chair Oscar L Tang and his wife Agnes Hsu-Tang in Dudamel’s name — the largest in its history.

But if it sounds as if everything Dudamel touches turns to gold, that’s not quite the case. Last year, he resigned as music director of Paris Opera, four years before the end of his contract, amid rumours of tensions with the company’s general director Alexander Neef. I ask what he makes of comments from Neef that imply Dudamel caved as a result of administrative stress: “Paris Opera is an ogre that is always hungry. It was really too much for [Dudamel].”

“Well!” Dudamel says, laughing rather emphatically. “It depends on the point of view.” His Zen-like equanimity is briefly ruffled. “It hurt me, it’s still painful, but I think it was for the best . . . It was difficult to fulfil the expectations of time and responsibilities, which I didn’t see at the beginning because, I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t explained in the right way to me.”

He pauses to spoon sauce over a vast dome of cake. “You know that all this liquid is rum,” he says. “Oooh, I’m not going to be working this afternoon!” My pear tart is neat and a little bland, but the cinnamon ice cream served with it is delicious.

My work with orchestras is about collaboration, it’s about having fun

We turn to less controversial subjects as the meal nears its end. Who is the more convincing conductor: Maestro’s Bradley Cooper or Cate Blanchett in Tár? “Ha ha! Both of them did an amazing job,” he says, flatly refusing the bait. “People think that to conduct is to move a stick in front of an orchestra. No, it’s difficult, and they really were conducting.”

Dudamel might share something of Leonard Bernstein’s theatrical style — as well as Lydia Tár’s admiration for the late, great Claudio Abbado — but little of his enormous ego. “In El Sistema it is about collaboration,” he says. “I wanted to have fun with my friends, so maybe that’s why my work with orchestras is about collaboration, it’s about having fun . . . I don’t see it as a talent, I see it as the way I grew up.”

Surely, though, fun alone isn’t enough to fire the passion and focus, the dazzling intensity, of his music-making? Where does his energy come from? “I always go back to my beginnings,” he says. “I still remember the first time that I was in the middle of an orchestra: I was inside that sound.”

Dudamel closes his eyes beatifically, as if transporting himself back to the podium, and The Dude starts to fade from view. “It was not only the sound but what that sound produced in me, and I share that with musicians all the time. I go back to that beginning, that moment when it was conquering me, and the desire to do that again and again.”

Laura Battle is acting senior editor, FT Weekend

‘Fidelio’ will be performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles on May 16 & 17; Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona on May 26 & 27; Philharmonie de Paris on May 31; and the Barbican, London, on June 3

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Letter in response to this article:

The Dude displays comic timing worthy of Disney / From Paul Lippe, Santa Monica, CA, US