The youngest Viennese New Year's Concert conductor in history, he has been hailed as "the man who rewrote the history of music in the 21st century". He has a passionate command style like a magic spell. Who is he?
Answer: Gustav Dudamel
Since winning the Mahler Conducting Competition in 2004, this Venezuelan "post-80s" big boy has swept through the major classical music festivals in Europe and the United States in three years, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic... Truly into the international perspective.
In 1995, at the age of 14, he was hired as music director of the Mozart Chamber Orchestra and became famous. At the age of 18, he led a symphony orchestra composed of children who grew up in poor families without any classical music tradition to Beethoven's hometown of Bonn, and deeply impressed the local people with a very insightful interpretation. At the end of the performance, the audience stood up and gave a warm applause and cheer for more than half an hour. At the age of 25, he took to the stage of The Alla Scala, the most prestigious opera in Europe, and conducted Mozart's opera Don Giovanni.
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At the age of 26, he made his debut at the Lucerne Festival to direct the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, a "super-band" in the classical music scene. In the same year, Dudamel took up his post as music director at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The classical music industry considers this to be a miracle of "one step to the heavens". At the age of 27, the Simon Bolívar Youth Orchestra, the magical "corps" he led, made his first visit to China and performed twice at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, becoming the highlight of the 2008 Beijing classical music performance. In the next ten years, Dudamel was like "opening the hanging", with rapid momentum and remarkable achievements. Finally, on the occasion of the 2017 New Year, the 36-year-old Dudamel successfully performed his debut at the Vienna New Year's Concert, the youngest conductor ever ushered in the Vienna New Year's Concert. A total of 50 million music fans around the world witnessed this event through live broadcasting.
Elīna Garanča is a Latvian mezzo-soprano. She began learning to sing in her hometown of Riga in 1996 and continues to study in Vienna and the United States. By 1999, she had won first place in a major competition in Finland and began her career in Europe.