A wild, untamed musical spirit

On April 9, the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced the appointment of Gustavo Dudamel as the orchestra's next music director, beginning in 2009. The news was a bombshell, and the global media went into astonishing high gear. India called. Al Jazeera requested an interview. "60 Minutes" insisted upon its 20 minutes with the fastest-rising star in classical music. But after a Philharmonic news conference, the fastest-rising star in classical music was nowhere to be found.

He was headed to Rome for an audience with the pope. Or more accurately, the pope was in the audience for Dudamel. Exactly a week after his L.A. news conference, the young conductor led the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra in a special 80th birthday concert for Benedict XVI at the Vatican. Hilary Hahn was the soloist in a Mozart violin concerto, and the concert concluded with Dvorák's "New World" Symphony. There were 7,000 people in the cavernous Paul VI Audience Chamber. The concert was also televised, and Deutsche Grammophon has now released it on DVD.

In addition, DG has recently made available for download on iTunes the Philharmonic performance of Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra conducted by Dudamel at Disney Hall in January -- part of the program that sealed his appointment. And on Oct. 9, the label will issue a CD of him conducting Mahler's Fifth Symphony with the Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, but that disc is already out in Europe and can be ordered from www.amazon.co .uk and other overseas sources.

All of this comes as a revelatory Dudamel bonanza. At the time of the Philharmonic announcement, his only recording was of Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh symphonies with the Bolívar band. Now, if you want to know what all the fuss is about, that recording and the new ones provide a hint. But be warned, it is only a hint. Excitement can be found in each release, but there are also compromises.

Two years ago, shortly after Dudamel's American debut with the Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, Deutsche Grammophon signed him with lots of hoopla. The company traipsed to the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, the following February to record the Beethoven and Mahler symphonies with the youth orchestra, which Dudamel has led since 1999. Like him, the players (all younger than 25) came up under El Sistema, the countrywide music education program that has more kids playing in orchestras than are on soccer teams.