A mentorship bears fruit

Leonard Bernstein: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Suite; Slava!; CBS Music; A Bernstein Birthday Bouquet

Leonard Bernstein: Anniversaries; Fancy Free; Candide Overture; Wonderful Town Overture

These two discs are due to be released on October 5, 2018.

I was just catching my breath after the August 2018 Leonard Bernstein Centennial when two Naxos re-issues, both of them marvellous discs, showed up from Sao Paulo. These are from the Marin Alsop Leonard Bernstein Anniversary box set released by Naxos early in 2018. Alsop, who studied under Bernstein at Tanglewood, conducts her Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) in an exciting and (almost) timely mix of occasional pieces and more substantial works. Naxos provides their usual high production values: vivid sound and interesting and informative documentation.

Thirty years before last month's Centennial bash there was a big celebration at Tanglewood for Bernstein's 70th birthday. The Boston Symphony had commissioned some distinguished composers to write short tributes to Lenny. My favourite is this fun piece by Luciano Berio; it has a cute ending!


These two discs are full of such clever trifles, but there are more substantial works as well. The Candide Overture has become one the Bernstein's most popular works during the Centennial year, and Alsop and her Brazilian players deliver a superb version here. The Fancy Free Suite is full of Broadway moxie and sentimentality, and it translates well here with a very slight samba flair and saudade sadness.

Marin Alsop works with Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood. Photo: Walter H. Scott, 1988. Boston Symphony Archives.

All of this music, and the entire Alsop Bernstein project, is really a story of the close relationship between a special mentor and a remarkably astute pupil. It's so exciting to see it bear fruit in these beautifully presented recordings of the Maestro's music.

Something in the water

Leonard Bernstein Broadway to Hollywood: Candide Overture, On the Waterfront Symphonic Suite, Fancy Free Ballet, West Side Story Symphonic Dances, Two Dance Episodes from On the Town

The idea that an orchestra has a home-town composer "in their blood", and are the best, most authentic interpreters of his or her music probably doesn't always, or even usually, hold up to close scrutiny. Aside from sheer familiarity, and with a nod to local traditions handed down from orchestral player to player over the years, today's high musical standards and player mobility has resulted in a much more globalised and homogenised classical music scene. Even in the past we heard great Villa-Lobos from Paris, great Shostakovich from New York, and great everything from Cleveland. But what about the scores of Leonard Bernstein originating on Broadway and in Hollywood, both of which have their own traditions? This 1993 concert from the Hannover Philharmonic under the direction of the Scottish conductor Iain Sutherland is a powerful example of getting pretty much everything right, every nuance and subtle rhythm, in a completely idiomatic, authentic performance that serves Leonard Bernstein's fabulous music so well.

This isn't as surprising as it seems when you pull some threads and see the connections. Bernstein himself has international roots, with European teachers at Harvard and Curtis, and a thorough grounding through his mentors in Parisian modernism. Broadway's musical traditions might seem 100% New York, but of course there's always been a special connection through London's West End theatres to the great heritage of English light music. Similarly, Hollywood's direct pipeline to central European music through such composers as Steiner, Korngold and Herrmann adds another loop. Bernstein is an heir to all of these traditions, as is Iain Sutherland, and the very fine players of the Hannover Philharmonic play the hell out of all this music. One of the highlights is the Symphonic Suite from On the Waterfront. I've always thought that after Elia Kazaan's direction, Budd Schulberg's story and Marlon Brando's performance, it was Bernstein's music that helped put this film over the top into greatness. The band has a lot of fun with the Fancy Free suite, showing great range, from small jazz combo through big band to complete orchestra, all of which swing.

Somm does its usual fine job with remastering, documentation and presentation, though they missed out on the credit for the cover photograph. It's by Al Ravenna of the New York World Telegram & Sun, from 1955, in the Library of Congress's collection.

This disc will be released on August 17, 2018.

Filling in details of Lenny's life and works

Leonard Bernstein: the complete solo piano works

I'm writing this review on Leonard Bernstein's 99th birthday. It's time to begin the Lenny Centennial celebrations, and what a good way to begin: listening (though not all at once) to the music he wrote for solo piano, for two and four hands. There aren't too many substantial works here, with most of the 56 tracks on two discs running two minutes or less. Bernstein wrote mainly miniatures, character pieces which quite often made reference to friends and professional colleagues. Even his Piano Sonata, an early piece written in 1938, is hardly a big work; the two movements add up to only 11 minutes. Pianist Leann Osterkamp helps to provide a more organic view of Bernstein's piano oeuvre by organizing the pieces more or less chronologically, but grouping pieces which share a connection with larger works together. She also includes a number of unpublished pieces and works that have never been recorded. Most importantly, Osterkamp plays this music with the perfect balance of respect for the composer and an awareness of the nature of circumstances of the work's composition. She has a lightness of touch that works well with Bernstein's often ironic point of view, recognizing mock seriousness or sentimentality but playing other works in a more straightforward way when required. Though the piano music represents nothing as profound or important as Bernstein's orchestral music or his works for the stage or the musical theatre, this delightful music fills in much detail of his character and his life. Michael Barrett provides an extra two hands in Bernstein's Bridal Suite, which is full of lovely melodies, ingenious touches and out and out jokes.

Bernstein at the piano during rehearsals for On the Town, 1953, via NYPL digital collection

One thing that these works illustrate is how social a person Leonard Bernstein was. He obviously gained energy from his huge network of close friends and colleagues in musical, theatrical and other artistic circles. Nothing could be further from the old stereotype of the composer wrestling with his Muse in his lonely attic. In the picture above he works with Roz Russell, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, George Abbott, Lehman Engel on the songs for Wonderful Town. It's a great picture, and it goes so well with the pictures he draws of both Comden and Green in two separate pieces included in this album. Bring on more music - and performance - of this calibre in the next 12 months!

To be released on September 15, 2017.

Strong performances of sometimes great music

Little Erich Wolfgang Korngold must have been excited when his first work was published by the distinguished firm Universal Editions of Vienna. Though his father was an important critic, the thirteen year old composer reached this Opus 1 milestone on his own merits, for this is an astonishingly accomplished work for one so young. Korngold's music came with raves from important people like Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, but the quality of the music is really self-evident. The piece is a perfect picture of one facet of Viennese music in 1910: it's full of sentiment and emotion, of gaiety and seriousness all mixed together in a delicious pastry. It steers clear of the modernism that Korngold's conservative father railed against, but there's enough harmonic and rhythmic sophistication to keep things interesting. The adolescent boy was even then building solid musical arcs, never dawdling or over-indulging when he comes across a good, big tune. These were all good traits for his future career in Hollywood. The young musicians of the Neave Trio put across this music in just the right way, with enough warmth but not too much schmaltz.

Leonard Bernstein was also a teenager when he wrote his Trio in 1937, though he was a good six years older than Korngold. This piece is nowhere near as proficient as Korngold's, with its academic roots evident, and its European modernist influences unevenly integrated. But there is considerable interest in thinking about where Bernstein will take certain aspects of this music later in his career. The jazzy second movement has its moments, and the marvellously atmospheric but simple opening of the final movement, which doesn't really move on to anything in this work, nevertheless points ahead to the great music to come. The performers keep things light and keep things moving, and provide as strong a case for this Trio as its slight frame can bear.

Arthur Foote's 2nd Trio is a mature work, and the Neave Trio have quite rightly placed it last on the program, since it has real weight and serious purpose. I think I prefer the new version by just a hair to the very good Arden Trio disc on Naxos, which is a bit breathless at times.  The depth of feeling in the gorgeous slow movement is a tribute to the abilities of these fine musicians, as well as Foote's as a composer. Watch this outstanding music making:



I have a bit of a problem with the title of the disc: American Moments. The Korngold is as Viennese as Schlosserbuben; America was decades in the future, and the young Erich Wolfgang was blissfully unaware of the horrors that would take him there. The Bernstein is trans-Atlantic at best, with as much Stravinsky as jazz, though his authentic American voice would come soon under the tutelage of Aaron Copland. And Foote's music lives cheek-by-jowl with Faure, Franck and Brahms, though underneath he's a real Yankee Transcendentalist. But this is a small matter, considering the excellent presentation of two special works, and one less special but still of real interest. The Chandos disc drops November 18, 2016.