On Disc: Best of All Possible Bernstein By THE NEW YORK TIMES

September 12, 2008
On Disc: Best of All Possible Bernstein
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

SO how will the music world celebrate Leonard Bernstein’s centenary? Fortunately it has 10 years to ponder, because the celebrations planned this season for his 90th birthday may be as hard an act to follow as, for London, the Beijing Olympic Games.

You can stick in a thumb almost anywhere and pull out a plum. Carnegie Hall is spearheading Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds, a two-month citywide festival, which begins with a Carnegie concert by the San Francisco Symphony on Sept. 24. The New York Philharmonic is a major player throughout, as well it should be, at both Avery Fisher Hall and Carnegie. Great Performers at Lincoln Center joins in with a film festival at the Walter Reade Theater opening on Oct. 15. And on and on.

Collins has just published “Leonard Bernstein: American Original,” a book of essays lavish with photos, assembled by Burton Bernstein, the maestro’s younger brother, and Barbara B. Haws, the longtime archivist and historian of the Philharmonic. Medici Arts has released “Leonard Bernstein,” a set of five DVDs of performances running from 1973 to 1990. Sony Classical, in its Original Jacket series, has released a package of 10 CDs, including one of my favorites, Bernstein’s early-’60s recordings of the Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story” and the Symphonic Suite from “On the Waterfront” with the Philharmonic, filled out with other works. And on some more.

By way of background to all of this, the classical music critics of The New York Times have singled out some of their favorite recordings of Bernstein as composer, performer or speaker. You’ll see their choices — and more of Lenny — in this section. But while I still have the floor, let me encourage you not to be without a Bernstein recording — any Bernstein recording — of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (“Resurrection”). He adored the work and trotted it out for special occasions, most memorably for me in his 1,000th concert with the Philharmonic, in 1971. There are other ways than his to approach this score, but if you don’t know everything he found in it, you hardly know it at all. JAMES R. OESTREICH

The classical music critics of The New York Times have chosen their favorite recordings featuring Leonard Bernstein as performer or composer.

Anthony Tommasini

BERNSTEIN: SYMPHONY NO. 2; ‘SERENADE’ Lukas Foss, pianist; Isaac Stern, violinist; Symphony of the Air, New York Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein (Sony Classical SMK 60558; CD).

BERNSTEIN: ‘MASS’ Soloists; Berlin Radio Chorus, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, conducted by Kent Nagano (Harmonia Mundi France HMC 901840.41; two CDs).

BERNSTEIN: ‘CANDIDE’ Original Broadway cast, starring Max Adrian, Robert Rounseville, Barbara Cook (Sony Broadway SK 48017; CD).

‘MODERN MASTERS’ Works by Lopatnikoff, Dallapiccola, Shapero. Columbia Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bernstein (Sony Classical SMK 60725; CD).

BIZET: ‘CARMEN’ Marilyn Horne, James McCracken, Tom Krause; choruses; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, conducted by Bernstein (Deutsche Grammophon 471 750-2; three CDs).

ON a muggy afternoon in July 1987, during a break from a rehearsal with a student orchestra at the Tanglewood Music Center, Leonard Bernstein spoke of the prejudice he felt he encountered for being a multitasking musician in a field that prizes specialization. “The composers don’t consider me a real composer,” he said, “the conductors don’t consider me a real conductor, and the pianists don’t consider me a real pianist.”

That Bernstein was insecure about his conducting seemed hard to believe. But he did endure frequent belittling of his own music, especially his large symphonic scores.

Whenever I listen to a work like Bernstein’s Second Symphony, “The Age of Anxiety” (after an Auden poem), I cannot recall why we are supposed to consider Bernstein’s major compositions so inconsequential. True, he saddles this 1949 score with a hokey metaphorical narrative: four lonely friends, a woman and three men, convene at a Third Avenue bar and begin an all-night rap session about the state of man.

But this vibrant, wildly varied work’s taut and inventive musical structure stands on its own, especially in Bernstein’s 1950 recording with the New York Philharmonic. A quizzical prologue introduces two sets of intricate variations, which segue into a dirge, a masque and an affirming, blazingly defiant epilogue. It’s essentially a symphonic piano concerto with a daunting solo part, played here brilliantly by the composer Lukas Foss. In one aggressively jazzy episode, piano riffs find common ground between Art Tatum and atonality.

When Bernstein’s “Mass” was introduced in 1971 at the inauguration of the Kennedy Center in Washington, it elicited hostile criticism for its peacenik pontifications and unabashedly hybrid score, drawing from rock ballads, Broadway sizzle and Mahlerian angst.

But there are disarmingly beautiful passages in this earnest and boldly eclectic theater piece, like the chorale “Almighty Father,” with its austerely spacious harmonies, and the bebopping “Alleluia.” That the work has been championed by contemporary-music dynamos, like the conductor Kent Nagano on his 2003 recording, is a testimony to its strengths.

Bernstein achieved Broadway immortality with “West Side Story.” But for all its problems, “Candide,” with lyrics primarily by the poet Richard Wilbur, is his most rewarding theater piece. After its dismal 1956 Broadway premiere, the show was extensively reworked for subsequent revivals, notably a 1974 Broadway production, generally considered the strongest. Still, I love the original cast recording, with the sweet-voiced Robert Rounseville as Candide and the irresistible young Barbara Cook as Cunegonde.

Bernstein as a forceful young advocate of living composers can be heard on a 1953 recording, conducting the Columbia Symphony Orchestra in works by Luigi Dallapiccola, Nikolai Lopatnikoff and the overlooked American master Harold Shapero. Bernstein leads an engrossing account of Mr. Shapero’s complex, sprawling Symphony for Classical Orchestra (1947).

Finally, a strong vote for Bernstein’s much-debated 1973 recording of Bizet’s “Carmen,” with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the great Marilyn Horne in the title role. Bernstein’s daringly slow tempos, though criticized by some, are revelatory. Ms. Horne’s “Habanera” is all the more seductive for its reined-in pacing and sultry phrasing.

Allan Kozinn

BERNSTEIN: ‘CHICHESTER PSALMS,’ SYMPHONIES NOS. 1, 2 Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Lukas Foss, pianist; Wiener Jeunesse-Chor, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Bernstein (Deutsche Grammophon 457 757-2; CD).

BERNSTEIN: ‘PRELUDE, FUGUE AND RIFFS,’ ‘ON THE TOWN: THREE DANCE EPISODES,’ ‘SERENADE,’ ‘FANCY FREE’ Benny Goodman, clarinetist; Zino Francescatti, violinist; Columbia Jazz Combo, Columbia Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, conducted by Bernstein (Sony Classical SMK 60559; CD).

BERNSTEIN: ‘ARIAS AND BARCAROLLES,’ OTHER WORKS Judy Kaye, soprano; William Sharp, baritone; Michael Barrett and Stephen Blier, pianists (Koch International Classics 7000; CD).

BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONY NO. 3 New York Philharmonic, conducted by Bernstein (Sony Classical SMK 60692; CD).

YOUNG PEOPLE’S CONCERTS New York Philharmonic, conducted by Bernstein (Kultur D1503; nine DVDs).

AS a composer Bernstein embodied what at the time seemed puzzling contradictions. He cultivated a hip image, drawing on Hispanic rhythms and jazz in his works of the 1940s and ’50s and banging out rock songs on the piano during his televised lectures in the 1960s. And he championed contemporary music of all kinds. Yet his symphonic works were startlingly conservative, their sometimes jazzy or lightly dissonant edges giving only hints of modernity to otherwise unabashed neo-Romanticism.

But Bernstein knew a thing or two, and if neo-Romanticism was criticized as a negation of modernism in his day, today young composers have embraced it, as have audiences. His First Symphony (“Jeremiah,” 1942), an ominous, wartime work, captures the spirit of its time in two intensely anxious movements that lead to a wrenching setting of excerpts from Lamentations, sung plangently by Christa Ludwig in Bernstein’s 1977 recording.

The Second Symphony (“The Age of Anxiety”) has dark edges too, but the zesty piano writing (played here by Lukas Foss) creates an appealing, restless energy. The disc’s real draw, though, is a lithe performance of the “Chichester Psalms,” a sweetly harmonized, texturally transparent setting that prefigures Steve Reich’s “Tehillim” in drawing its rhythmic vitality from the meter of the Hebrew text.

Rhythm of a jazzy sort is at the heart of “Prelude, Fugue and Riffs,” the virtuosic score Bernstein composed for Benny Goodman, and it drives the companion works on the disc: most notably the “On the Town” dances and sections of “Fancy Free.” But even when rhythm holds the spotlight, melody exerts a strong tug in Bernstein’s music, nowhere more than in his songs. “Arias and Barcarolles” brings together eight composed at various times and in several styles (a couple flirt with 12-tone technique); eight songs from theater pieces and “Songfest” fill out the collection. “Dream With Me,” from “Peter Pan” (1950), is worth the price of the disc on its own: Bernstein’s languid, bittersweet melody is one of his most haunting and memorable.

For those of us of a certain age part of Bernstein’s appeal was his ability to teach, painlessly. A short sample of his easygoing, persuasive analytical style is included as a bonus with his fine 1964 account of Beethoven’s Third Symphony (“Eroica”).

But the mother lode is the trove of Young People’s Concerts, broadcast by CBS between 1958 and 1973. Eloquent and passionate, with an infectious love of music and what makes it tick, Bernstein taught a generation about classical structures and techniques (sonata form, orchestration, syncopation, musical humor) and styles (Impressionism, jazz, folk influences, American music), with loving explorations of the sections of the orchestra and particular composers (Mahler, Stravinsky, Shostakovich). These shows — the Kultur set includes 25 — have worn well: Bernstein was not condescending when he spoke to children, and even a listener who knows how music works can get a lot from his talks. Not least, they recall a time when a major network offered this kind of thing in prime time, and when the classical music world had someone with the personality to carry it off.

Steve Smith

CHERUBINI: ‘MEDEA’ Maria Callas, Fedora Barbieri, Gino Penno; La Scala Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by Bernstein (EMI Classics 5 67909 2; two CDs).

SIBELIUS: SYMPHONY NO. 2, ‘POHJOLA’S DAUGHTER,’ ‘LUONNOTAR’ Phyllis Curtin, soprano; New York Philharmonic, conducted by Bernstein (Sony Classical SMK 61848; CD).

MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO. 5 Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Bernstein (Deutsche Grammophon 477 633-4; CD).

IVES: SYMPHONY NO. 2, ‘CENTRAL PARK IN THE DARK,’ ‘THE UNANSWERED QUESTION’ New York Philharmonic, conducted by Bernstein (Deutsche Grammophon 429-220-2; CD).

‘ESSENTIAL LEONARD BERNSTEIN’ (Deutsche Grammophon 471-518-2; two CDs).

IN his star-making debut with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall on Nov. 14, 1943, Bernstein proved he was able to make magic in a pinch. Something similar happened just over a decade later at La Scala in Milan, when an indisposed Victor de Sabata canceled a 1953 engagement. Cherubini’s “Medea,” a recent success for Maria Callas in Florence, was hastily scheduled; the soprano, having heard a Bernstein-led performance on the radio, recommended hiring the still young and inexperienced conductor.

Bernstein, who had only five days to learn the score, predictably drew out its heated passions, yet he accompanied the imposing Callas with supreme sympathy and flexibility. This monaural recording, long available through pirate channels, was painstakingly restored by EMI in 1999. Climaxes still distort, and the prompter is overemphatic; even so, this a vital document of a meeting for the ages.

Sibelius was not a composer with whom Bernstein was closely associated. More’s the pity, to judge by a disc of the Symphony No. 2 made with the New York Philharmonic in 1966. Textures are lean and clear; the music flows easy and cool. The finale, deadly in the wrong hands, sounds properly regal. Of added value are “Luonnotar,” a moody rarity featuring the wonderful Phyllis Curtin, and a “Pohjola’s Daughter” that has never been bettered.

As Bernstein recorded staples of his repertory for a second or third time late in his career, he could sometimes be guilty of distension or distortion. Not so in his spectacular Vienna Philharmonic recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, issued in 1988. As always, Bernstein’s Mahler is internalized and idiosyncratic, but how astonishing are the peaks he finds in this account, how terrifying the abysses. You could wallow in his luminous Adagietto for days.

Similarly, Bernstein’s second New York Philharmonic recording of Ives’s Symphony No. 2, issued in 1990, is every bit as lively and alert to eccentric detail as his previous account, taped three decades earlier. But the patience and insight revealed in the more recent account are persuasive, and the disc also includes breathtaking versions of Ives’s “Central Park in the Dark” and “The Unanswered Question.”

Deutsche Grammophon’s inexpensive, generously filled “Essential Leonard Bernstein” compilation, from 2001, includes pieces cited elsewhere as favorites of my colleagues. What makes the set compulsory for me is its inclusion of two brief celebratory works: “Slava!,” a tribute to the cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, and “A Musical Toast,” dedicated to the conductor André Kostelanetz. These express in microcosm practically everything we value about Bernstein’s music; whacking timpani in them repeatedly during high school and college made me a fan for life.

Vivien Schweitzer

MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO. 5 Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Bernstein (Deutsche Grammophon 477 633-4; CD).

MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO. 1, SYMPHONY NO. 10: ADAGIO New York Philharmonic, conducted by Bernstein (Sony Classical SMK 60732; CD).

BRAHMS: SYMPHONIES NOS. 2, 4 Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bernstein (Medici Arts 2072138; DVD).

‘CHICHESTER PSALMS,’ ‘ON THE TOWN: THREE DANCE EPISODES,’ ‘ON THE WATERFRONT’ Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marin Alsop (Naxos 8.559177; CD).

BERNSTEIN: ‘CHICHESTER PSALMS,’ SYMPHONIES NOS. 1, 2 Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Lukas Foss, pianist; Wiener Jeunesse-Chor, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Bernstein (Deutsche Grammophon 457 757-2; CD).

“IF you love music, you are a believer, however dialectically you try to wiggle out of it,” Leonard Bernstein said. He was a fervent believer in the music of Mahler, who had earlier champions in conductors like Otto Klemperer and Dimitri Mitropoulos but benefited enormously in the postwar years from Bernstein’s enthusiastic advocacy and impassioned performances.

Bernstein, who related strongly to Mahler’s angst, demonstrated a visceral empathy with his music. His live Deutsche Grammophon recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic just a few years before his death in 1990, illustrates the power of his Romantic, emotive approach. Bernstein harnessed the impeccable technique and glorious sound of the Vienna musicians in a performance full of demonic excitement, sweeping tragedy and blazing climaxes, with the velvet sound of the strings used to poignant effect in the famous Adagietto.

A 1966 recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 (“Titan”), reissued in Sony’s Bernstein Century series features a younger Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic, with which he began his long tenure as music director in 1958. The lithe, propulsive performance is more restrained than some of his later Mahler interpretations, but there is plenty of tumult and brooding intensity.

Bernstein also had an affinity with Brahms, whose music he began conducting as a student in 1940, studying the composer’s works at Tanglewood with his mentor, the renowned Serge Koussevitsky. Bernstein led the Boston Symphony Orchestra in passionate, fiery performances of Brahms’s Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4 at Tanglewood in 1972. His charisma on the podium during those concerts can be enjoyed on a Medici Arts DVD.

Bernstein the composer has a champion in Marin Alsop, who decided to become a conductor after hearing him lead the New York Philharmonic when she was 9. On a Naxos disc, she conducts an uplifting performance of his colorful “Chichester Psalms” with the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and Orchestra (of which she was principal conductor from 2002 to 2008). Bernstein described the “Psalms,” for which he set Hebrew texts, as the “most B flat majorish tonal piece I’ve ever written.” The recording also includes lively renditions of his Three Dance Episodes from “On the Town” (a musical theater piece) and the Symphonic Suite from “On the Waterfront,” which uses material (including some that was cut) from his 1954 film score.

Bernstein, who often conducted his own works, led the Israel Philharmonic in his Symphonies Nos. 1 (“Jeremiah”) and 2 (“The Age of Anxiety”) for a 1978 Deutsche Grammophon recording. Lukas Foss is the fine piano soloist in the episodic Second Symphony, an evocative and theatrical work inspired by an Auden poem about four loners bonding in a New York bar. It includes a jazzy piano riff originally written for but discarded from “On the Town.” Conducting the symphony, which he revised in 1965, Bernstein (who was the pianist at the 1949 premiere) vividly illuminates the booze-fueled nocturnal adventures of the four characters.