Gustavo Dudamel formally celebrated the start of his tenure as music director of the New York Philharmonic on Wednesday night with an inaugural gala and concert at David Geffen Hall, the orchestra’s home at Lincoln Center.
The Venezuelan conductor, who holds the title of Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Music and Artistic Director, led a program that the orchestra billed as a preview of his vision for its future, built around composers from across the Americas, including Duke Ellington, Alberto Ginastera, Gabriela Ortiz and Gabriela Lena Frank. Tony Award winner Brian Stokes Mitchell was scheduled to sing selections from Stephen Sondheim’s “Company,” and Argentine pianist Sergio Tiempo was also on the bill.
The gala honored the Philharmonic’s board co-chairmen, Peter W. May and Oscar L. Tang, whom the orchestra credits with leading the renovation of Geffen Hall, recruiting President and CEO Matías Tarnopolsky and bringing Dudamel to New York.
A month of firsts
The evening capped an unusually full first month. Dudamel, whose appointment was announced in February 2023, opened his tenure with a concert at Radio City Music Hall on September 10 and led a memorial concert on September 11 marking the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, according to the season plan the orchestra released in March.
His first subscription concerts as music director, held September 16 to 19, paired John Adams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “On the Transmigration of Souls,” which the Philharmonic premiered in 2002 to honor the victims of 9/11, with the world premiere of “Invisible House” by Zosha Di Castri and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5. New York Classical Review called the Adams performance deeply concentrated and said Dudamel showed “courage and wide-ranging imagination” with the two newer scores, though it found the Prokofiev short on long-range shaping.
The following week’s program, presented September 25 to 27 and again on September 29, drew stronger notices. It opened with the world premiere of Tania León’s “Imágenes mestizas,” a Philharmonic commission, and closed with Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, a work closely tied to the orchestra, which Mahler himself once led. The same publication called the Mahler “a tremendous performance in the moment” and wrote that “no Philharmonic conductor since Bernstein has brought this music back to life like Dudamel has.” The reviewer described León’s piece as stylish and evocative but felt it ended abruptly.
Star soloists and a tour
The opening stretch continues this week with two famous soloists on back-to-back nights. Lang Lang, the first soloist to appear with Dudamel at Geffen Hall in his new role, was booked for Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto on Thursday, October 1, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma is scheduled to play Osvaldo Golijov’s “Azul” on Friday, October 2. On Saturday, the orchestra plans the U.S. premiere screening of a new director’s cut of “Tocar y luchar,” the 2006 documentary about El Sistema, the Venezuelan youth orchestra program that trained Dudamel.
Next, Dudamel takes the Philharmonic abroad for the first time. A two-week, 10-concert European tour from October 9 to 22 includes stops in Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna. The orchestra says it will be its first European tour in almost a decade.
A long relationship
Dudamel first conducted the Philharmonic in November 2007 and had led it in 75 concerts by the end of the 2025-26 season, when he served as music director designate. His first full season also includes the start of a five-year partnership with Carnegie Hall, where he will conduct opera, and collaborations with performance artist Marina Abramović and composer Gustavo Santaolalla.
The season is set to close in June 2027 with the orchestra’s first performances of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” in its entirety, presented in a staged production. Over the full season the Philharmonic plans seven world premieres, three U.S. premieres and two New York premieres.
Sources
- New York Philharmonic: Gustavo Dudamel's Inaugural Gala
- BroadwayWorld: Gustavo Dudamel and the New York Philharmonic Unveil The Inaugural Season, 2026-27
- New York Classical Review: Dudamel opens new Philharmonic era with a 9/11 remembrance and a raucous premiere
- New York Classical Review: Dudamel leads the Philharmonic in a Mahler Fifth of depth and complex beauty
