Gustavo Dudamel vs. the Second Coming

Judging from all the recent press, Gustavo Dudamel's coming to Los Angeles as the Music Director for the Los Angeles Philharmonic is a news event equivalent to the second coming – and with greater expectations. If he doesn't conduct the world's greatest concerts, end war in the Middle East, cure AIDS, and out draw the Lakers, his first season will be considered an abject failure.

Overstatement is certainly nothing new in advertising for the arts, and since hyperbole is the expected language in ads and press releases, anything less falls flat. I know this first hand from my work in advertising for the Media City Ballet Company. "Come see a very good mid-level ballet company perform an entertaining and fairly artistic rendition of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker," becomes, "Don't miss this truly great performance of Tchaikovsky's timeless masterpiece The Nutcracker by the outstanding Media City Ballet Company."

I suppose, "Come hear the LA Phil under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel. Mr Dudamel is a very talented young conductor who should grow and mature nicely while working with the Phil," will never make it into the orchestra's advertising. Admittedly, that version may be a little too understated, but there is something to be said for lowered expectations.

Take Robert Schumann's article in Neue Zietschrift für Musik about Johannes Brahms. In hyperbole worthy of a trailer to a Hollywood blockbuster, Schumann writes:

[In a galaxy far, far away]. . . someone must and would suddenly appear destined to give ideal presentment to the highest expression of the time, who would bring us his mastership, not in process of development, but would spring forth like Minerva, fully armed from the head of Jove. And he is come, a young blood by whose cradle graces and heroes kept watch. He is called Johannes Brahms . . . He [bares] all the outward signs that proclaim to us. "This is one of the elect."

Minerva herself couldn't have lived up to such high expectations and the glowing praise really messed with Brahms' head. It is said to be one of the main reasons why he took so long to complete, and then to publish, his first symphony.

But Brahms survived and most likely Dudamel will as well. In the end, it is about the music and nothing else. If the music is true, it doesn't matter how far the truth is stretched in the press.