The challenge is not so much to change the sound. The challenge is to connect and to create something special.
I want to work with the big orchestras. I want to have a big family.
You have to believe that things will happen, you have to work and love what you’re doing.
With an orchestra you are building citizens, better citizens for the community.
Classical music in Venezuela is now something like a pop concert. You can see people screaming or crying because they don’t have a ticket.
Recently, I went to a disco with friends, and all the young people were saying, ‘Dudamel, we want to go to your concert, but it’s impossible because it’s sold out.’ It’s really amazing.
My material life is simple.
Los Angeles is a very special city. It’s a great ethnic mix, a great cultural mix.
It’s a physical challenge. It’s a spiritual challenge. I’m studying almost every day a different symphony, not returning to any one for a week.
I wanted to play my violin and have my musical expression through the instrument. But then I was really young when I had my first opportunity to conduct.
My relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra brought me many times to London and I will always reflect positively on that early period of development with them – their patience, their warmth, their dedication.
I think that I need to learn a lot, a lot.
I think the atmosphere of a Prom concert can change your life, in the best way. It’s so deep, the feeling you have there. The audience is so close, and there are so many of them, that you feel they are almost embracing you.
I love to read different books on completely different subjects at the same time. I cannot focus on one. I read a few pages of literature, then I jump to philosophy and at the same time I’m reading biographies of Mahler.
For me, Venezuela is very important, not just because it’s a place I go to conduct, but because my family is there – my wife, my parents and my musical family.
For me to rehearse with a children’s orchestra a Mahler symphony was to really work. We had three or four weeks of rehearsal with the orchestra, every day eight or nine hours, putting the First together. I had been conducting Tchaikovsky a lot and Beethoven, but Mahler was different.
You learn a lot about each other from a tour, musically and humanly.
I have eaten very well in Los Angeles. Marvelously!
I love to travel, but sometimes it’s nice to stay in one place.
When you play Mozart, it’s so clean, it’s so simple. It’s the body naked.
A friend gave me a CD of the ‘Pathetique’ Symphony as a Christmas present. I went home, and I put on the CD expecting to listen to Tchaikovsky. But it started ‘ta ta ta taaa.’ It was too long for me. I didn’t understand it at first, but then I fell in love, in love, in love.