On his blog Entartete Musik, Gavin Plumley reviews Gustavo Dudamel’s recent recording of Mahler’s 9th Symphony, noticing “yearning tempo changes” and “the feeling of an unstoppable juggernaut”.

In September 2010, we interviewed Gustavo Dudamel for our new publication Gustav Mahler: The Conductors’ Interviews (you can watch all of the video-interviews here). Dudamel himself describes the music of the 9th as “perfect. You don’t have to do anything. The notes are there and the indications, ‘faster’, ‘slower’, ‘pianissimo’, ‘sostenuto’, ‘marcato’, everything. The only thing you can add is the energy and the vision.”

Furthermore, he remembers what Sir John Berbirolli once said about Jacqueline du Pré: “If you don’t exaggerate when you’re young, then what are you going to do when you’re old?”

Gustavo Dudamel on Mahler

Entartete Musik

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