New Year's Concert from La Fenice

Young and talented conductors often bring freshness and audacity to the interpretation of known (and less known) music, they are less 'hampered' by the constraints of experience... On the other hand, the more experienced conductors often build on their experience to bring new subtleties of the score, to play with the orchestral texture and make the known music sound different/fresh...

Diego Matheuz

Diego Matheuz was appointed the chief conductor of the large and prestigious Orchestra Filarmonica della Fenice, at the age of 27. Despite his undeniable talent, and after having listened to the New Year's concert from Venice, I began to think that this appointment might go against his own artistic development, and even his career.

A young conductor needs some years of experience: touring, learning from great senior conductors, working with various orchestras, trying different repertoires, different styles...

For everyone who loves music and is altruistic about it, it is impossible not to be fascinated by the Venezuelan El Sistema. It is, however, irrational not to acknowledge the valley between that fascination and the baffling glorification of Matheuz and/or Dudamel. Diego Matheuz is clearly very talented, but so are David Afkham, Clemens Schuldt, Lionel Bringuier, Kazuki Yamada, Andris Poga...

In other words, PR is fine as long as there's space for a minimum of objectivity. Otherwise we might slide to the situation in which the talented --and "so cute!"-- children conduct big philharmonic orchestra...


Ah yes.... the New Year's concert from La Fenice --live broadcast today (January 1st 2012) on Arte-TV-- is appended below.

Diego Matheuz conducts, and the soloists are: Jessica Pratt, Alex Esposito, and Walter Fraccaro. 





Of you cannot see the above video immediately, it will be available in a few hours or so. If you're  impatient try http://videos.arte.tv/fr/videos/concert_du_nouvel_an_a_la_fenice-6299412.html