The only continuing primetime performance showcase on American television, GREAT PERFORMANCES presents a diverse programming portfolio of classical music, opera, popular song, musical theater, dance, drama, and performance documentaries. With its programs garnering 64 Emmy Awards and four George Foster Peabody Awards, the series has received every major television honor.

Regardless of geographic or economic limitations, GREAT PERFORMANCES insures its audiences “the best seats in the house” with a roster of artists and performing arts companies that represent a “Who’s Who” of excellence and virtuosity in the international performing arts.

Adams’ work stands out among contemporary classical compositions for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes. Because of his ability to integrate different styles, including American popular forms, his standing today has been of compared in importance to American musical expression to that of Aaron Copland in the forties and Leonard Bernstein in the fifties.

In a segment that aired on October 18, 2009 for WNET.org’s weekly arts program, SundayArts, Paula Zahn interviewed John Adams, composer of the new work City Noir performed for Dudamel’s inaugural concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Learn more about this composer’s work in the following video profile:

When Gustavo Dudamel’s in town, you go. So on Saturday night, I caught the opening concert of the Israel Philharmonic’s U.S. tour with Dudamel at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, just prior to his two Carnegie Hall concerts on November 16 and 17.

I asked my 14-year-old daughter to come along, and I didn’t even have to twist her arm. Here’s the rare A-league conductor who’s not even twice her age, and he jumps around on the podium pretty much like kids her age. On a more serious level, my daughter also gets that Dudamel is considered in the same league artistically as Leonard Bernstein, and that this makes his concerts potentially historic. She has friends who are envious she got to go, friends who know that this “Dude” isn’t the same as the “Later, dude” dude.

The concert itself—Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony and two works by Bernstein, his Halil for solo flute, string orchestra, and percussion, and his Jubilee Games, written for the 50th anniversary of the Israel Philharmonic, in 1986—was … how do I put this? It felt like a love-fest between the Israel Phil and Dudamel. The program was so intimately connected with the orchestra and its history that it was impossible not to be moved at many points during the evening. Plus, Leonard Bernstein not only was the composer of two pieces of music on the program, he led the IPO as early as 1948, in Beersheba, Israel, and conducted it frequently thereafter, eventually being named laureate conductor in 1988. Jubilee Games itself is a classically Bernsteinian messy hodgepodge; it’s got some parts where musicians can improvise, such as free-form strings sawing away and trombones raucously glissandoing, a little Habanera, a little Shostakovich, ending with a recorded voice singing the Benediction in Hebrew. The orchestra threw itself into the performance and made as good a case as probably can be made for the music.

Dudamel conducted the Tchaikovsky from memory. The brass played with a wild intensity during the first and fourth movements, the strings wonderfully evoked balalaikas in the pizzicato movement, the oboe and bassoon traded the second-movement’s mournful melody back and forth with skill. And of course, it was entertaining to watch Dudamel’s dancelike podium maneuvers, especially when  he gave fist-pump cues on Tchaikovsky’s heavy, Russian offbeats. The orchestra members seemed to bask in the occasion of playing for Dudamel, at first refusing to stand or take bows themselves.

The IPO tour takes place on the occasion of Israel’s 60th anniversary. And as these things happen sometimes, the moment that felt most special wasn’t anything on the written program. It was the opening, with the American flag lit at the left of the proscenium, and the Israeli flag on the right. The orchestra stood up and played first the “Star Spangled Banner” and then “HaTikvah.” Everyone in the auditorium, 2,750 of us, stood up and sang—quite beautifully, actually—and we got all choked up.

Pity the Rodolfo and Mimì pouring out their hearts this July in La Scala’s La Bohème. It’s possible that more people will be craning their necks to see 27-year-old Venezuelan conducting sensation Gustavo Dudamel in the pit, than either the Mimì (Italian soprano Carmela Remigio) or Rodolfo (American tenor James Valenti, who sang a televised Pinkerton this season at New York City Opera). Neither Valenti nor Remigio is a big name like Angela Gheorghiu, the Met’s Mimì this season, or Jonas Kaufmann, who sang Rodolfo in a Bohème conducted by Dudamel in February. But at least Remigio has lived through Dudamania before: she sang Donna Anna in a 2006 Don Giovanni he led in Milan.

Yes, Dudamania is in full swing. In Los Angeles, where Dudamel begins as the L.A. Philharmonic’s new music director in 2009-10, the orchestra welcomed its curly-haired superstar this spring with a lunch catered by none other than Pink’s hot dog stand, creating for the occasion a special “Dude dog”—guacamole, cheese, fajita mix, jalapenos, tortilla chips. (Dudamel is said to be fond of hot dogs.) Normally, classical musicians are barely on the radar screens of the bigger media outlets, but he’s such a hot commodity that he recently had to turn down numerous interview requests, including ones from Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno. His fiery performances of Shostakovich, Mahler, and Beethoven with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela have gotten people excited the way they used to get over Bernstein. The Venezuelan orchestra has become symbol of the against-all-odds success of that country’s government-run music-education program, and Dudamel is its hero.

Of course, opera and symphonic performances are two different beasts, and the lyricism and sweetness of Puccini’s La Bohème are in pretty strong contrast to, say, Beethoven’s obsessional motivic pursuits or Mahler’s extremes of emotion. But it’s hard not to cheer for Dudamel, whose young Venezuelan musicians regularly whoop it up in an encore from Ginastera’s Estancia ballet that involves instrument-twirling, dancing, and a ferocity and joyful abandon you rarely see from a large orchestra. I’ve been enjoying listening to the Fiesta, a new Dudamel/SBYOV CD of an all-Latin American program that includes the Ginastera, as well as Revueltas’s Sensemaya and the rollicking Mambo from Bernstein’s West Side Story that also has had audiences on their feet cheering the way they do after a goal at a soccer game.

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The Los Angeles Philharmonic is widely regarded as one of the most contemporary and innovative orchestras in America. Dudamel made his U.S. conducting debut with the LA Phil at the Hollywood Bowl in September 2005. In April 2007, during a guest conducting engagement with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Dudamel was named the LA Phil’s next Music Director as of the 2009-2010 season, succeeding Esa-Pekka Salonen. “For me, this is really so exciting to be starting my first season as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic,” says Dudamel. “First, this is a beautiful challenge and second, it’s a wonderful opportunity to make great music with my new LA Phil family. The most important thing is to enjoy our time together.”

On the program for his inaugural concert are Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major (“Titan”) and the world premiere of that latest work by Pulitzer Prize-winning music composer John Adams, City Noir. “As the title suggests, ‘City Noir’ is a symphony inspired by the peculiar ambience and mood of Los Angeles ‘noir’ films, especially those produced in the late forties and early fifties,” reveals Adams, newly appointed LA Phil Creative Chair. “My music is an homage not necessarily to the film music of that period but rather to the overall aesthetic of the era.”

Gustavo Dudamel is the product of the National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela, or more popularly known as El Sistema (the System), created in 1975 by José Antonio Abreu, a Venezuelan conductor, petroleum economics professor and former congressional deputy. Targeting mostly children living in slums, the System gives a musical instrument and instruction to many underprivileged and at-risk Venezuelan youth as an alternative to gang life and crime. “Music changed my life,” Dudamel told the British Herald newspaper. “I can look back now and see that many of the boys from my class went on to become involved in drugs and crime. Those who played music did not.”

Before he even begins his directorship at the LA Phil, Dudamel has been instrumental in creating the American version of El Sistema, YOLA or Youth Orchestra Los Angeles. The program, modeled after the Venezuelan prototype, began in 2007 with youth between the ages of seven and 16 from a disadvantaged district in south central Los Angeles, but its ultimate goal is to provide a musical instrument and a place in a youth orchestra for every Los Angeles county young person who wants one.

News of Gustavo Dudamel’s talent first spread worldwide after his triumph at the inaugural Bamberger Symphoniker Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in May 2004. Just three years later, Dudamel was awarded the Premio de la Latindad, an honor given for outstanding contributions to Latin cultural life. In 2008, the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra was granted Spain’s prestigious Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts, given annually by the Prince of Asturias Foundation in Spain. Dudamel was awarded the 2007 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award for Young Artists and, most recently, along with his mentor Dr. Abreu, the 2008 “Q Prize” from Harvard University for extraordinary service to children.

The national PBS telecast of Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic: The Inaugural Concert is being produced by Bernhard Fleischer Moving Images, THIRTEEN for WNET.ORG, ZDF-ARTE, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Directed for television by Brian Large, the concert will be telecast in South America and Asia as well.

Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, Vivian Milstein, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers and PBS. Major funding is also provided by The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund, with additional funding from the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust.

Photo by Robert Corwin

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A coveted ticket, the popular annual concert is set among the enchanting surroundings of the Schönbrunn Palace grounds, with the musical repertory selected on the theme “Night.” Concert highlights include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “A Little Night Music,” Johann Strauss’ “A Thousand and One Nights” Waltz and Modest Mussorgsky’s “A Night on Bald Mountain.” In addition to conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, Barenboim–equally known for his masterful skills as a piano soloist–took center stage to perform Spanish composer Manuel De Falla’s “Nights in the Gardens of Spain” to thunderous applause. The 90-minute television concert captures the glorious Baroque Park in all its atmospheric moods, from early morning dewdrops to mid-day sunshine to a foggy, mysterious nightfall. “There is no one quite like Daniel Barenboim today in the music world,” raves the New York Times.

Barenboim’s current appointments include serving as the general music director of the Berlin State Opera and its orchestra, as well as the Berlin Staatskapelle. He is also principal guest conductor of the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan. Formerly music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris, Barenboim has been a regular guest of the Vienna Philharmonic since his debut with the orchestra in 1989. Most recently on PBS, viewers will recall Barenboim as guest conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Day concert, which aired on Great Performances on January 1, 2009.

For more than 160 years since 1842, there is perhaps no other musical ensemble more closely associated with the history and tradition of European classical music than the Vienna Philharmonic. Richard Wagner described the orchestra as being one of the most outstanding in the world, and Richard Strauss summed it all up by saying, “All praise for the Vienna Philharmonic reveals itself as an understatement.”

Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, Vivian Milstein, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers and PBS. Exclusive corporate funding for this telecast is provided by Rolex. Additional support is provided by The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund and Vera von Kuffner Eberstadt. For Great Performances, John Walker is producer, Bill O’Donnell is series producer and David Horn is executive producer.