"Music is my life, it is a tool to express myself and to be able to say through it what I feel. It is everything", says the conductor Gustavo Dudamel (Barquisimeto, Venezuela, 39 years old).
And now, in times of pandemic?
The actress María Valverde - his wife, present in the interview as co-president of the Dudamel Foundation since 2018 - is quick to say "hope, light."
The conductor adds "optimism."
"Music is a fundamental, necessary resource. It is one with
exion with imagination
.
You feel it as you need to feel it and now that we are at a time when everything has stopped, we have had to isolate ourselves who we are social beings, that we need to be united, now it has an essential role.
We are suffering a great trauma from not being able to have the connection that we are used to. "Gustavo Dudamel is the star of the show
Symphony.
A journey to the heart of music
, project for four years and already established as a reality by La Caixa Foundation.
From today you can see, hear and feel in Madrid, next to the Royal Palace, until January 19.
Sixty musicians from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and 40 young people of 22 nationalities
together they play pieces by Beethoven, Mahler and Leonard Bernstein under the baton of the young master.
First come the sounds of the sea and the street and then, through special glasses and headphones, the viewer enters the interior of a trumpet, in how a
luthier
sculpt and polish a violin.
The screen offers the cosmos, the bottom of an ocean.
One can turn in all directions and feel, too, inside the orchestra, next to the violins
, between the flutes or next to the trombone.
"It is a visual poem", specifies the director and scriptwriter of the montage, Igor Cortadellas.
"A journey to the soul from our daily noise." "It is a show for all ages, from eight years old, of any social condition," adds María Valverde, who points out the objective of
Symphony
: visit 100 cities The word commitment.
"This show was not created for the pandemic but now it has become more important because
our goal is inclusion through art
.
The most disadvantaged can connect with art, try to understand it through the use of technology, poetry and cinema ", adds the musician.
Beethoven year
, the German composer is, for Gustavo Dudamel, "the most avant-garde musician of all time. Even in his later music, the
Quartets
, is still modern for our times, it is a unique reference.
And the most humanistic.
He tried to give a message through his music, that connection with transcendence, of the importance of man in the world as a collective, social being that could carry out transformations. "María Valverde's favorite piece is the
New World Symphony
.
Dudamel's,
Third
of Beethoven, known as the
Heroic
, and the
Ninth
by Mahler, among so many compositions.
Maria Valverde
addresses his "social work at the Dudamel Foundation.
As a person I needed to be actively involved in society
.
I got to know El Sistema [Venezuelan social exchange and action organization created by the director José Antonio Abreu in 1975 from which Dudamel emerged] before Gustavo, to be able to work with children and give them the tools, the right to be and to be ... ". Dudamel, as musical director of the Los Angeles Orchestra, was forced to interrupt the custom of conducting "four weekly concerts in the middle of the centennial acts of the formation and the Power to the People festival where we treated all musical styles and see them like one.
Everything has been canceled until July 2021, almost a season and a half.
The economic losses have been gigantic.
But it has also been a way to recreate ourselves,
not sit around waiting, but see possibilities
.
Maria and I did a radio show in Los Angeles from the Hollywood Bowl, in a glass box, all separated.
She recited poems by Neruda and works inspired by the Chilean writer were performed "[can be seen / heard on the Philharmonic website, in the Sound / Stage section under the title
Love in the time of Covid
]. Dudamel adds that this pandemic "did not lead us to despair, but to deep reflection: how we have been living,
which things we have given importance to and which ones did not have it
.
Both as an individual and also as a couple.
And as a member of an orchestra.
We act like Maestro Abreu, who saw crises as opportunities.
Now we have to go up another step. "The first time Dudamel saw Abreu in person he was nine years old." He came to give a concert in Barquisimeto and I saw a wonderful rehearsal and he began to teach us music as a language that I did not know and that completely inspired me.
He connected with me and then the National Children's Orchestra of Venezuela came, in the early 90's. He was always my guide. "
Venezuela, politically
, has no cure?
"Of course yes.
It is a very difficult, very complex and very painful situation
for the whole, because
the one who suffers in the end is the people
.
There has to be a solution as soon as possible because the people suffer.
Politicians have to do their job, find a solution by putting aside egos, ideologies, looking for common ground.
We have not realized in the world that differences enrich us.
We have a permanent dialogue flawed in the aspect that everything is conflictive;
if we think differently you are my enemy, when difference could provide us with a point of dialogue.
I don't know who it suits us to always keep in conflict
.
I speak of my country and of many parts of the world where it does not come to mind that the differences are very important, but without impositions or radicalisms ".
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