Review: Gustavo Dudamel and Yuja Wang lead an exceptional, propulsive Rachmaninoff festival

Two days after the announcement that in a full 43 months, or approximately 1,300 days, Gustavo Dudamel will become music director of the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s music director faced his public in Walt Disney Concert Hall. The festival marks the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninoff’s birth on April 1, along with the 80th anniversary next month of his death in Beverly Hills, and it is based on Wang playing the Russian composer’s four piano concertos and his “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.” Each is on a different night. Wang recently made news by playing the four concertos and rhapsody in a marathon at New York’s Carnegie Hall, with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who is also music director of the Metropolitan Opera. Each program ended with Dudamel conducting Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, his best known — and best — orchestral work.