Bernstein 100

Wednesday 8 November 2017 7.30–9.30pm Barbican Hall LSO SEASON CONCERT BERNSTEIN 100 Bernstein Symphony No 1, ‘Jeremiah’ Interval Mahler Symphony No 1, ‘Titan’ Marin Alsop conductor Jamie Barton mezzo-soprano Part of Bernstein 100 at the Barbican 6pm Barbican Hall LSO Platforms: Guildhall Artists Free Pre-Concert Recital Songs by Bernstein and Copland Welcome Coming Up LSO News alongside the music of a composer he BERNSTEIN 100 CONTINUES DESIGN TEAM FOR CENTRE FOR MUSIC admired greatly, Gustav Mahler. For ‘Jeremiah’ we are delighted to be joined by soloist Saturday 16 December 7.30pm The Barbican, LSO and Guildhall School, Jamie Barton, making her LSO debut. Barbican Hall backed by the City of London Corporation, have announced that design studio Diller These concerts are part of both the Bernstein Symphony No 2, Scofidio + Renfro, in collaboration with Barbican’s Bernstein 100 series and a ‘The Age of Anxiety’ architecture firm Sheppard Robson, have been worldwide celebration of the composer’s Bernstein Wonderful Town (concert version) appointed to develop a concept design for a centenary. For more information visit new Centre for Music in the City of London. leonardbernstein.com/at100. Sir Simon Rattle conductor Krystian Zimerman piano 2018 PANUFNIK COMPOSERS SCHEME Welcome to this LSO concert, which continues A pre-concert performance of songs Danielle de Niese Eileen our celebration of Leonard Bernstein as by Bernstein and Copland was given by Alysha Umphress Ruth Applications for the 2018 Panufnik we approach his centenary year in 2018. Guildhall School singers this evening. David Butt Philip Lonigan Composers Scheme are open until Bernstein was one of the 20th century’s These recitals, which are free to ticket- Nathan Gun Bob Baker 13 December, offering six composers most influential musicians and a great holders, take place on selected dates Duncan Rock Wreck the chance to work with the Orchestra friend of the LSO; in 1986 the Orchestra throughout the season and provide a Ashley Riches Guide/First Editor/Frank and composition director Colin Matthews. marked his contributions with a large-scale platform for the musicians of the future. London Symphony Chorus Bernstein Festival, and he later held the title Simon Halsey chorus director HALF SIX FIX CONTINUES of President, a position reserved for the most I hope you enjoy tonight’s performance distinguished collaborators of the Orchestra. and can join us again soon. Our Bernstein The LSO’s first Half Six Fix event took series continues on 16 and 21 December, Thursday 21 December 6.30pm place on 1 November, featuring an hour In our series, which began on Saturday and when Sir Simon Rattle conducts the musical Barbican Hall of music conducted and introduced by continues in December, we focus on one of Wonderful Town and Symphony No 2, Gianandrea Noseda, with screens to showcase the lesser-known sides of Bernstein’s output, ‘The Age of Anxiety’. Bernstein Wonderful Town (concert version) the performers and digital programme his symphonies. Following a performance of notes. Join us for the next instalment on his Third Symphony on Sunday, it is a pleasure Sir Simon Rattle conductor 21 December, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. to welcome back conductor Marin Alsop, a cast as 16 December pupil and close friend of Bernstein’s, who • Read news, articles and interviews, has championed his music throughout her Recommended by Classic FM watch videos and more online career. Today we hear two first symphonies, Kathryn McDowell CBE DL lso.co.uk/news with Bernstein’s own ‘Jeremiah’ placed Managing Director lso.co.uk/blog 2 Welcome 8 November 2017 Tonight’s Concert / introduction by David Gutman Bernstein and Me / by Marin Alsop wo symphonic debuts fill this At the time of their composition both eonard Bernstein was a thinker, musicians magically turn into four-year-olds evening’s programme, each with these masterpieces represented a career teacher, author, television star, with that sparkle of anticipation in their eyes its own special character but departure for relatively junior conductors. provocateur, humanitarian – that says, ‘Yes, please tell us that story!’. sharing certain preoccupations. Completed Of course it was Bernstein whose prowess and he was my hero. Bernstein taught me in short order during World War II and on the podium played such a major part in much more than a craft. He showed me – In 1986 the LSO presented a festival inspired by the biblical lamentations of transforming perceptions of Mahler, for the and the world – that classical music is a honouring Bernstein, which included the prophet Jeremiah, Leonard Bernstein’s last half century rated perhaps the greatest powerful force that can transform lives as works by others whom Bernstein admired, First Symphony was his earliest major symphonist of the modern age. well as inspire and move people, and he championed or was influenced by – orchestral work. You can hear the imprint lived by those principles. Mahler, Stravinsky, Ives, Britten, Blitzstein, of mid-century American concert music Shostakovich – along with film screenings, in the opening movement but Bernstein’s PROGRAMME NOTE WRITERS Seeing Bernstein conduct when I was an exhibition and a Royal Gala Performance unmistakable ‘biological’ personality is nine years old at a New York Philharmonic in the presence of Her Majesty The Queen. revealed more fully in the jazzy, fractured David Gutman is a writer of CD and Young People’s Concert convinced me that As a result of the festival, the LSO and rhythms of the extended scherzo. programme notes who has provided conducting was the only thing in the world Bernstein became much closer, and he The element he derives from traditional extensive commentary for the BBC Proms that I wanted to do. That alone would have became President of the Orchestra in 1987. Hebrew chant blooms most overtly since 1996. His books cover subjects as been enough of a gift – but then, when I It was through Bernstein that I first met in the nobility and pathos of the final wide-ranging as Prokofiev and David was 31, he took me under his wing and the LSO, at the Pacific Music Festival in ‘Lamentation’. Here age-old concerns Bowie and he is a regular contributor to imparted to me the heart and soul of the craft. Japan in 1990, while he was already suffering confront the reality of the Holocaust. Gramophone and The Stage. Bernstein’s total engagement with the from the lung disease that would lead to music, the orchestra and the audience was his death three months later. In his opening By contrast Mahler’s 19th-century epic, Stephen Johnson is the author of Bruckner beyond thrilling. I fell in love with him on the remarks, he said that he had decided to a young man’s all-embracing statement Remembered (Faber) and Mahler: His Life and spot and adored his rebellious embracing devote what time he had left to education, about life which took some 14 years to reach Music (Naxos). He also contributes regularly of every genre of music. because mentoring young people was its final form, could end in heroic jubilation. to BBC Music Magazine and The Guardian, the most rewarding way to spend his The music famously reflects an abiding and broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, Radio 4 One of the greatest gifts Bernstein shared remaining time. love of nature but its parody funeral and the World Service. with me was the significance of story; march is an early indication of his own that every piece has an inherent story Those of us there on that day understood obsession with fate and death. The several and that every composer spends his life the profound gift Bernstein was giving episodes of ethnically alien, klezmer-ish WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS trying to articulate his own personal story. to each of us. But my gift from Bernstein village band music must have been the I was always delighted when he would stop started that day so long ago, when I most shocking element for well-heeled Tonight we are delighted to welcome a rehearsal and say, ‘Must I tell you the story was just nine years old and first dreamed contemporary audiences. British Emunah Entertains. of this Haydn Symphony?’, only to have 70 of becoming a conductor. • Tonight’s Concert 3 Leonard Bernstein Symphony No 1, ‘Jeremiah’ 1942 / note by David Gutman 1 Prophecy him about a mooted Tchaikovsky biopic in Bernstein had begun the work as early as 1939 Even in his early 20s, a high seriousness 2 Profanation which he would have played the composer with ideas for a Lamentation for soprano and underpinned the podium acrobatics. 3 Lamentation opposite Greta Garbo’s Madame von Meck! orchestra which only later morphed into the In 1977 Bernstein would remark that all The young polymath had already moved final movement of a fully-fledged symphony. his larger works shared a common theme: Jamie Barton mezzo-soprano from the periphery of American cultural life The finished score was dedicated as a ‘the struggle that is born of the crisis of to its very core. conciliatory gesture to the composer’s father our century, a crisis of faith’. Nothing if any of today’s composers avoid not ambitious, he meant not only religious symphonic form. Or at least they — faith, but faith in the individual, in mankind, say they do, labelling their large ‘The symphony does not make use to any great extent of actual in the future. orchestral works with some name less likely to needle the avant-garde by invoking Hebrew thematic material … As for the programmatic meanings, It is possible to view ‘Jeremiah’ as a outmoded tradition. To the uninitiated it the intention is not one of literalness, but of emotional quality.’ programme symphony with a concrete may come as a surprise to discover that story to tell about that self-inflicted loss of Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein wrote three symphonies, faith.

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