Tokyo — Just a few days earlier than Air Power One landed in Tokyo on Monday, an advance workforce of Angelenos had flown in on an endeavor of cultural diplomacy. Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, on an Asia tour that additionally consists of Seoul and Taipei, had no official enterprise in Japan apart from to offer two concert events over the weekend of works by John Adams, Stravinsky and Mahler in Suntory Corridor, repeating applications that they had carried out at Walt Disney Live performance Corridor earlier within the month. It was a hit-and-run mission.
Cultural diplomacy will not be what it as soon as was. The U.S. authorities not sends American orchestras to interrupt the ice in locations the place speak does little, or to easily share tradition without having for politics to get in the way in which. Typically it really works, if not directly.
Regardless of the White Home’s causes — be they differing concepts of cultural relevance or the truth that Los Angeles and Venezuela have been in navy crosshairs these days — the L.A. Phil and its Venezuelan music director appeared little-noticed brokers of goodwill. However, in actual fact, cultural connections between L.A. and Japan run deep.
The U.S. president and Japan’s newly elected prime minister, a onetime heavy steel drummer, reportedly talked baseball. Tokyo, not surprisingly, nearly appears like Dodgertown Asia. Even devotees of the rarefied world of Noh theater keep up in the midst of the night time to observe Dodgers video games, discovering a kinship in Shohei Ohtani’s eloquent motion to the oldest and most mystifying surviving theater custom.
Noh and different facets of Japanese tradition have each overtly and surreptitiously crept into the L.A. Phil as effectively. An early obsession with Noh made it a main affect on the director Peter Sellars, whose longtime affiliation with the L.A. Phil started in 1992. He was employed as a cultural information to L.A.’s new, younger Finnish music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen. That marked the start of the visionary trendy L.A. Phil.
Walt Disney Live performance Corridor additionally has Japanese roots. Little Tokyo provided an architectural awaking for a younger Frank Gehry, and Disney’s celebrated acoustics hint instantly again to Suntory Corridor, Yasuhisa Toyota’s first main challenge. The continuing partnership between the Japanese acoustician and Gehry has now internationally formed what a live performance corridor might be and why that may matter.
The Dodgers have been a really powerful ticket in a uncommon go to to Japan in March, however Tokyo audiences can witness Dudamel, who’s to many Japanese followers the classical music Ohtani, with the L.A. Phil now. And, the prime minister’s baseball and heavy steel apart, Tokyo is an orchestra-happy metropolis. It helps 9 full-time skilled symphony orchestras and almost as many live performance halls. A variety of the world’s main orchestras seem right here repeatedly, and hardly every week goes by when one isn’t on the town and more than likely in Suntory, which capabilities as Tokyo’s Carnegie Corridor.
Though Dudamel claimed he hadn’t consciously realized it when he made his applications, which have been highlighted by Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, he wound up paying direct tribute to Suntory’s affect on Disney. Salonen had capped Disney’s opening night time gala with a “Rite” so visceral that it felt like a brand new starting. Someday previous what would have been the twenty second anniversary of that gala, Dudamel led a really completely different however simply as riveting “Rite” in Suntory.
Architecturally, Suntory, although in what was a nonetheless untraditional so-called “vineyard” structure for the seating, is extra typical than Gehry’s radical Disney. However acoustically they share Toyota’s genius for immediacy, transparency and sonic oomph that goes straight to the intestine. Even so, Suntory sounds extra simple. The music comes on to you. In Disney, the orchestra sounds prefer it surrounds the viewers as a lot we do the musicians. We feed off one another.
Japanese live performance audiences sit up and hear with distinctive focus. That custom additionally goes again to Noh theater, the place any applause makes the performers, whose devotion is their apply, not the viewers, uneasy.
Such restraint is hardly the case with trendy live performance audiences right here, however standing ovations stay uncommon. Mahler’s Second, furthermore, might nearly be a usually ghost-haunted Noh play. It begins with loss of life within the type of a startling half-hour funeral oration, seems to be again at life, what it was (and was it something?) after which solutions with an overwhelming affirmation that features giant refrain, two vocal soloists and organ added to the huge orchestral forces.
Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic carry out Mahler 2 at Suntory Corridor in Tokyo on Oct. 25, 2025.
(Junichiro Matsuo / Suntory Corridor)
There was utter silence from the viewers on the matinee efficiency on a wet, wintry Saturday throughout the 90-minute efficiency. No stirring throughout the break after the primary motion as members of the native New Nationwide Theatre Refrain walked on stage with the ceremonial sluggish gliding actions of acolytes in a temple.
In Disney, Dudamel’s “Resurrection” had the standard of rapture in encompass sound. Offstage brass have been above and behind and amongst us. Dudamel created a magic phantasm of the orchestra and the viewers being one, leaving listeners on the finish rising and cheering as one.
In Suntory, there was no room for the offstage brass to be wherever however offstage. The sound of the orchestra was extra central, extra sharply centered. The strings had a chunk. A solo oboe was a prophetic voice within the wilderness. Tympani had the affect of taiko drums. The enjoying was hermetic.
The ovation didn’t come directly, however one after one other within the viewers stood till a lot of the corridor was on its ft. Applause remained movingly subdued, as if wanting to keep up a way of awe. After a number of curtain calls, Dudamel motioned for the gamers to go away the stage. The ovation continued nonetheless. Musicians lingered, paused for selfies and after an extended whereas Dudamel casually returned on stage to wave. The ice was damaged, and Suntory turn into Disney-like.
Dudamel’s program the night time earlier than was otherwise acquired. It started with Adams’ new symphony, “Frenzy,” which was dazzlingly performed, and included Stravinsky’s Suite from “The Firebird” together with the “Rite.” Perhaps it was the orchestra’s better familiarity with the intricate rating, however “Frenzy” had much less frenzy and better in affect in Suntory than it had in Disney.
“Firebird,” alternatively, lacked the glow of L.A.’s acoustical gentle. However the “Rite” got here throughout as shock remedy. It’s a work that has nice resonance for the Japanese. Susanna Mälkki, the L.A. Phil earlier principal visitor conductor, had simply performed with the Tokyo Symphony to reportedly nice acclaim the week earlier than. An avant-garde butoh troupe is busily performing its personal erotic model in Tokyo.
However, like no different orchestra, Stravinsky’s “Rite” is within the L.A. Phil DNA. Stravinsky lived longer in L.A. than wherever else, and performed the L.A. Phil. Salonen made the rating the showpiece of Disney. For his half, Dudamel’s Disney “Rite” changed frenzy with strong splendor. In Suntory, the oracular energy of Dudamel’s “Rite” proved outright shock remedy. No standing over, simply surprised applause.
Orchestra excursions have up and down sides. Wowing a overseas viewers isn’t essentially well worth the nice expense, transporting, on this case, 123 musicians together with workers and devices. The carbon footprint exacted is critical. Ten years in the past on a Japan tour, Dudamel and the L.A. Phil demonstrated their price by together with members of YOLA. The children performed with younger musicians from the Fukushima area nonetheless recovering from the nuclear reactor catastrophe.
This yr as journey out and in of the U.S. has turn into tougher, there might be no YOLA contingent. And Angelenos might be envious of Tokyo. Dudamel’s Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela was not capable of journey to the U.S. for its scheduled Hollywood Bowl applications final summer time, however Suntory used the event of Dudamel’s presence to announce that he and the Bolivars might be a featured a part of the corridor’s fortieth anniversary celebrations subsequent yr.
