Gustavo Dudamel conducts Tchaikovsky and Brahms

In 2014, Gustavo Dudamel celebrates Shakespeare's 450th birthday with the Berliner Philharmoniker at Berlin’s Waldbühne!

El Sistema prodigy Gustavo Dudamel has become an international sensation. The current music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dudamel is one of classical music's biggest personalities, and in 2014 the Berliner Philharmoniker invited him to conduct its annual summer concert in the beloved Waldbühne, an incredible outdoor amphitheatre. 

Dudamel conducts two Tchaikovsky works inspired by Shakespeare: the gorgeous symphonic fantasy The Tempest, and the heart-stopping Romeo and Juliet with its famous love theme. The Russian composer's Shakespearean adaptations lead into Brahms's First Symphony, a work the composer himself described as "long and not exactly lovable," fearing that larger audiences would have difficulty understanding the symphony. But he may have underestimated his audience—despite his fears, the First has become one of the best-loved and most performed orchestral works in history.

Picture: © Holger Kettner