147 People, 17 Days: How Dudamel's Philharmonic Stormed Europe

The New York Philharmonic moved 147 people across four countries in 17 days for 10 performances in October, a tour the orchestra itself called a "multimillion-dollar endeavor." The traveling party included musicians, backup conductors, sound technicians, librarians, stagehands, donors, executives and a tour doctor. They went by train, bus caravan, and chartered and commercial aircraft.

The six-city European tour capped five weeks of dinners, parties and performances in New York celebrating Gustavo Dudamel's arrival as the orchestra's music and artistic director. Adam Nagourney of The New York Times followed the orchestra to Paris, Barcelona and Madrid, attending five concerts and five rehearsals.

What did the tour actually involve?

Plenty went wrong, and none of it stopped the machine. An overnight fire shut down trains from Barcelona to Madrid. Street protests — described in the report as a precursor of the huge demonstrations to come — snarled traffic across Paris. A singer fainted at a concert in Madrid. The next night, the principal bassoonist fell ill and stayed in her room.

This was the orchestra's first full-scale European tour in nearly 10 years, staged barely a month after Dudamel took over. Heading out of town mid-fall season carries obvious risks. The Philharmonic booked the trip anyway.

Why tour so soon after Dudamel's arrival?

The institution's leadership framed the trip as strategic, not ceremonial.

"The importance of taking the show on the road — in this way, at this time, to these destinations — is absolutely part of launching this new era," said Matías Tarnopolsky, the president and chief executive of the Philharmonic. "If you're going to aspire to the level we're aspiring, international touring is an essential element. We were talking about a new chapter: I think it's sort of a new book."

A new book, then, not merely a chapter. That is an ambitious sentence for an institution that hasn't mounted a full European tour in a decade.

Dudamel himself described a European tour as one of his early priorities. He called it a "chance to present all of this new music coming from the Americas" and a way to "show what we have coming in the future."

What does the tour signal?

The timing is the message. An orchestra that waits a decade between European tours, then leaves town a month into a new music director's tenure, is making a statement about ambition. The Philharmonic under Dudamel wants to be measured against the touring giants of the field, and it wants that measurement now.

The scale tells its own story. Backup conductors, a touring doctor, donors on the plane — this is the apparatus of a global institution, deployed at considerable cost and logistical risk, to introduce a new era to European audiences before that era has fully begun at home.

Whether the "new book" sells abroad as well as it did in Barcelona and Madrid will depend on what the orchestra, and Dudamel, deliver back in New York over the seasons to come.