DUDAMEL RESURRECTS MAHLER, AND HIMSELF,
IN A PERFORMANCE THAT TRANSCENDS GOODBYE

Gustavo Dudamel’s farewell season in Los Angeles has already taken on the air of ritual, and no ritual is more fitting for a conductor’s parting gesture than Mahler’s Second Symphony. The Resurrection has become the universal valedictory of the orchestral world, a monument through which departing maestros try to say what words cannot. In the past two seasons alone, it has marked farewells from Fabio Luisi in Dallas, Jaap van Zweden in New York, and Esa-Pekka Salonen in San Francisco. Dudamel now joins that procession, not as an imitator but as the conductor who still seems born to conduct Mahler.

The question isn’t whether the Resurrection can still shock (it can) but whether any performance can escape the weight of expectation that now surrounds it. Mahler’s symphony has become a public monument, which means it risks being admired rather than felt. Dudamel’s answer was to ignore the monument entirely and conduct the score as if he’d just discovered it, which in some sense he had. Memory, after all, is not the same thing twice.

From the opening bars, the first movement’s funeral march moved with a measured tread, heavy but not leaden. The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s strings played with a burnished tone that seemed to glow from within. Dudamel conducted from memory, his beat less a command than an invitation. The music didn’t sound controlled so much as allowed to happen, which is harder than it looks. His hair has gotten much greyer this season, which you notice when he tilts his head back during the climaxes.

Three things struck me about the Andante: first, the tempo, which was slower than I expected but never felt slow; second, the way Dudamel shaped the phrases with patience that felt almost reckless given how easily this movement can sag; and third, something about the woodwind balance that made the whole thing feel newly written. The scherzo came alive with rhythmic bite. It recalled… well, it recalled something darker than usual, something Shostakovich-like maybe. Mahler’s sardonic humor landed with real sting rather than the usual knowing wink. The orchestra’s precision kept the grotesquerie from tipping into chaos, though it came close enough to make you wonder (if that was intentional? probably).

Disney Hall helped. Frank Gehry‘s design has been praised and criticized in equal measure since it opened in 2003, but its acoustics (overseen by Yasuhisa Toyota) remain among the finest in the country. The hall wraps sound around you without smothering it. During the scherzo, you could hear the plucked double basses as distinct articulations rather than a vague rumble. In the finale’s climax, when the organ, offstage brass, and full chorus converged, the sound was enormous but never muddied. Toyota designed the space to preserve clarity even at overwhelming volume, and it delivered. The vineyard style seating, with the audience surrounding the orchestra, made the experience feel less like observation and more like participation. This matters more than you’d think for Mahler, whose music assumes you’re inside it.

Scottish mezzo-soprano Beth Taylor sang the fourth movement’s “Urlicht” with the intimacy of a prayer. Her phrasing was so inward that the hall seemed to contract around her voice. Taylor’s breath control in the pianissimo passages made me aware I was holding my own breath. The finale arrives and suddenly you’re inside it, that metaphysical storm in which Mahler tries to imagine apocalypse and redemption simultaneously. The offstage brass, the organ, the chorus, the full orchestra: it should have been too much, and for about thirty seconds it was, but Dudamel pulled the architecture taut and the excess became necessity. Israeli Soprano Chen Reiss joined Taylor for the finale’s vocal duet, her tone bright against Taylor’s darker warmth. When the LA Master Chorale entered, they didn’t just sing the text, they inhabited it, their German diction crisp even at full volume. Something in the hall shifted. People stopped moving.

The performance had a cinematic vividness that recalled Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, which used this symphony as its emotional climax. That film gave Mahler’s Second a cultural visibility it hasn’t had in decades, which is both good and risky. Good because more people now know the piece exists, risky because they expect catharsis on demand. Dudamel didn’t deliver catharsis so much as create the conditions for it. Leonard Bernstein’s approach, whether live or on film, was volcanic. Dudamel’s is quieter, though no less intense. He conducts as if his job were to get out of the way.

He’s conducted this symphony many times: an exuberant account at the BBC Proms with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra (available on YouTube), a shattering performance with the Berlin Philharmonic, a complete Mahler cycle in 2012 that was more audacious than successful. Not every performance has worked. A DVD recording with the Munich Philharmonic was beautifully played but too polished, the sound glowing warmly without the sharp edges Mahler requires. That experiment confirmed what Saturday night proved: Dudamel needs an orchestra that can blaze as well as sing, and Los Angeles does both.

This performance surpassed his previous attempts. Not because it was louder or faster (it wasn’t) but because it felt necessary rather than commemorative. It wasn’t just good. It’s the kind of performance that’ll be talked about for years, the kind that makes other conductors rethink their approach. Dudamel seems to trust his musicians to inhabit the music rather than execute it, and the result is an orchestral sound that goes past technical perfection into something less definable. The final choral climax wasn’t triumphal but cleansing, a release rather than a victory.

The audience reaction bordered on devotional. Several people wept. The ovation lasted nearly ten minutes, which is longer than the first movement. The Los Angeles Philharmonic has never sounded more assured.

Dudamel’s gift isn’t only technical mastery but his capacity to generate belief, which is what orchestras need now more than precision. Orchestral musicians today are more fluent in Mahler’s idiom than ever before. What distinguishes great performances isn’t accuracy but conviction, and conviction is what Dudamel restores. His Resurrection wasn’t a display of orchestral luxury but something closer to necessity.

Mahler wrote the Resurrection before his conversion to Catholicism, when his spiritual identity remained uncertain. The finale’s text speaks of divine salvation, but the music isn’t sectarian. It imagines resurrection as available through art itself. Dudamel’s faith, whatever form it takes, is clearly musical. He believes sound can redeem, which aligns him with Bernstein’s claim that Mahler’s music “is about everything.” Whether that’s true is beside the point. It felt true tonight. (The four-performance run ends tomorrow.)

The LA Phil plans to take the symphony on a ten-day, three-country tour to Seoul, Tokyo, and Taipei October 21-30, performing with local choirs. Microphones were visible around the stage, and a recording seems likely. If it appears, it will probably earn a Grammy nomination, not because the industry rewards subtlety but because sometimes large gestures and genuine artistry coincide.

The Resurrection has marked so many farewells in the past two seasons that it’s become almost rote, but Dudamel made it feel personal again. Whether that’s because of his artistry or because Los Angeles really will miss him is hard to separate. Probably both. Whoever is chosen as his successor (my bet is on Elim Chan) will confront a trial of truly Olympian proportions, striving to match the rare and deeply deserved adoration he has inspired. ¡Gracias, Gustavo, sentiremos hondamente su ausencia!

Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 2, Resurrection
Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles
reviewed on October 11, 2025
ends on October 12, 2025
for tickets, visit LA Phil