He's the rock star of classical music. Handsome, talented, charismatic - the usual accolades apply to Gustavo Dudamel, at age 27, incoming music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He guest-conducts the New York Philharmonic Saturday at Tilles Center.

Moments before his 2007 Lincoln Center debut, an archivist surprised Dudamel by presenting him with a baton used by the late Leonard Bernstein. "I could not speak," the Venezuelan-born Dudamel recalled in a Newsweek interview. It's not a bad omen that he later snapped the baton in two. The high-energy Bernstein broke many batons. A former wunderkind himself, he's the maestro to whom Dudamel is most often compared...