NEW YORK — The New York Philharmonic has gotten so excited about their new music director that they can hardly contain themselves. Instead of performing at Geffen Hall, they staged their 2026-2027 season opener — a welcome for Gustavo Dudamel — Sept. 10 at Radio City Music Hall, a venue with nearly three times the capacity, and packed the program with an array of musical celebrities from beyond the world of classical music.
The message of the evening, hammered again and again in spoken interludes from the evening’s charming host, actor Liev Schreiber, was that New York City is a city dedicated to the arts, that the arts are for everyone — not just the elites — and that New York and the Dude were a match made in heaven. But did the actual performance fulfill those promises?
Of course, it was easier to make the case that the arts are for everyone in a massive, packed concert venue in the center of the city, and with the likes of Lizzo taking the stage. But more interesting was Dudamel’s approach to the evening’s NYC-centric programming.
Throughout his career — with the Simón Bólivar Symphony Orchestra and again with the Los Angeles Philharmonic — his pops selections have proudly emphasized Latin American repertoire, and he has demonstrated a special skill in turning a classically trained ensemble into a well-drilled dance band by bringing out, with a combination of zeal and precision, the cross-rhythms that make the Latin repertoire so thrilling. The programming at the Radio City concert made it clear that those same rhythms are at the core of what defines New York musically, starting with the opening piece, Gershwin’s overture to — appropriately enough — Strike Up the Band.
Throughout the performance, while the new, much-hyped, state-of-the-art amplification system at Radio City smoothed the string sound to a fine gloss, it left the pointed attacks driving these New York rhythms, the pinging xylophone keys and harp strings, especially exposed, and if in this opening number things rattled a little out of joint briefly here, the Phil is too well-oiled a machine for it to last longer than one moment. Gershwin, perhaps the composer most synonymous with New York City, is a cinch for them, as star principal clarinet Anthony McGill demonstrated in a characteristically elegant solo.
The first pop soloist of the evening was St. Vincent, the elegant indie rock singer-songwriter known offstage as Annie Clark. She presented “Smoking Section” and “New York,” a pair of songs from her 2018 album MASSEDUCTION in orchestral arrangements by Jules Buckley, Rachel Eckroth, and Jochen Neuffer. As would prove to be the case with the other guest vocalists, her numbers were especially well chosen for symphonic treatment, carefully structured to build toward a sense of grandeur bolstered by swelling strings and brass. Her voice is not a powerful or wide-ranging instrument, but it can shape a melody, and the sweep of her songwriting was difficult to resist.
Following St. Vincent came a New York premiere by one of the few hometown composers with crossover appeal comparable to Gershwin’s. For all his popularity, Philip Glass has been oddly neglected by the Philharmonic, but it is still hard to believe that his dazzling Anniversary Overture (or Concert Overture), commissioned by the Baltimore and Toronto symphonies for the bicentennial of the War of 1812, has never been performed in his own city. Dudamel’s interpretation of Glass’ surprisingly dynamic score left the Bruckner Orchestra Linz’s recorded version in the dust — and is any classical composer in the States so closely associated with those cross-rhythms that Glass has so much fun with here?
Yes, but only one: the next composer on the program, Leonard Bernstein, in West Side Story. Broadway’s Aaron Tveit met the challenges of two numbers from that musical, the rhythmically ferocious “Something’s Coming” and the rangy “Maria,” followed by “Being Alive” from Company — the common thread here being Stephen Sondheim, one of Tveit’s specialties and Bernstein’s West Side Story lyricist. Like Bernstein’s vocal lines, Sondheim’s push the limits of the singing actor toward the operatic, and their accompaniments — presented here in arrangements by Chris Walden — are as cleverly detailed as anything in the canon.
The details, and the episodic structure, of Jessie Montgomery’s Banner for string quartet and orchestra, next on the program, may have been a bit subtle for the big (heavily amplified) hall, and it seemed the hardest sell of any of these pieces — but the fault there lay neither with the composer nor the interpreters. The widely programmed work is a compelling comment on America’s history by way of its national anthem, and the Philharmonic’s soloists, led by concertmaster Frank Huang, delivered a lucid and passionate performance of its highly idiomatic quartet parts from within the orchestra.
The composers of the last three segments on the program were the only ones without roots in Manhattan. Joaquina, a Miami-based pop singer from Dudamel’s native Venezuela, sang “pesimista” and “el Alquimista” — a duet with Julio Reyes Copello — from her album al romper la burbuja, here arranged by Eric Allen, in a breathy but highly controlled voice, turning up the brightness as necessary to delineate a phrase. Especially given New York’s booming population of Venezuelan asylum-seekers and other immigrants, it was moving to see two of their number, both highly sophisticated musicians, embracing and collaborating on one of the city’s biggest stages.
Arturo Márquez’s Danzon No. 9, one of a cycle of works by the Mexican composer that have been staunchly championed by Dudamel, was less compelling, cinematic in both the immediacy and in the flatness of its appeal, though the spotlight it shined on each section of the orchestra in turn was highly flattering to the polished blend of each choir of instruments.
Midwestern flutist-rapper-singer Lizzo concluded the program with a medley, arranged by Tim Davies, of the title track and “Truth Hurts” from her platinum Cuz I Love You. Since the release of that album, upsetting allegations of abusive offstage behavior have damaged Lizzo’s popularity with the wider public, but clearly not with the audience of the Philharmonic, who gave her brilliant charisma, brassy vocals, and commitment to being — in her words — ”a hundred percent That Bitch” a standing ovation.
Seeing her and Dudamel hastily deciding, onstage, to perform an encore of “Truth Hurts” made it clear why his popularity, unique among conductors worldwide, matches his extraordinary musical talent. It was impossible to tell whether the exchange was staged: Dudamel’s easy, radiant star power truly is Bernsteinesque — as big as Radio City Music Hall itself.
