News for Friends of Leonard Bernstein Spring/Summer 2021 COURTESY OF THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC ARCHIVES Bernstein and Stravinsky: Eternal Modernists 2 Bernstein & Stravinsky 8 Artful Learning 12 In Memoriam Inside... 4 New Sony Box Set 10 From the Archives 14 In the News 6 MTT & LB 11 Mahler Remastered 16 American Ballet Theatre Bernstein and Stravinsky: Eternal Modernists by Hannah Edgar captivated.1 For the eternally young Bernstein, The Rite of Spring would concert program is worth forever represent youth—its super- ince when did a virus ever slow Lenny a thousand words—though lative joys and sorrows, but also its Sdown? Seems like he’s all around us, Leonard Bernstein rarely supreme messiness. Working with the and busier than ever. The new boxed Aprepared one without inaugural 1987 Schleswig-Holstein set from Sony is a magnificent way to the other. Exactly a year after Igor Music Festival Orchestra Academy, commemorate the 50th anniversary Stravinsky’s death on April 6, 1971, Bernstein’s training ground for young of Stravinsky’s death, and to marvel at Bernstein led a televised memorial musicians, he kicked off the orches- Bernstein’s brilliant evocations of those concert with the London Symphony tra’s first rehearsal of the Rite with his seminal works. We’re particularly happy Orchestra, delivering an eloquent usual directness. “The Rite of Spring to share a delightful reminiscence from eulogy to the late composer as part of is about sex,” he declared, to titillated Michael Tilson Thomas, describing the the broadcast. Most telling, however, whispers. “Think of the times we all joy, and occasionally maddening hilarity, are the sounds that filled the Royal experience during adolescence, when of sharing a piano keyboard with the Albert Hall’s high dome that day. you’re lying face down on the ground older Maestro to play the four-hands ver- Bernstein selected three pieces from in the spring, and you want to kiss sion of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Stravinsky’s compendious output: [the earth]. You watch the grass grow. In other recording news, Bernstein The Rite of Spring (naturally), the You want it to just enfold you.” Reimagined is a fascinating, virtuosic Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, Woodshedding the notorious- exploration of Bernstein works through and the Symphony of Psalms. ly challenging Rite with a young a jazz lens. And, as soon as we snag that How do you sum up a life? More orchestra was probably intended to new 8K technology, we can’t wait to dive than that, how do you sum up a raise the profile of the brand-new into the newly remastered Mahler videos. creative mind whose very aesthetic festival, but its selection also speaks How heartening, meanwhile, that whirled in a career-long pirouette? to Stravinsky’s towering place in the world of live musical performance One suspects mere summary was not the cultural zeitgeist. To Bernstein, is slowly but surely coming back to life. Bernstein’s M.O. when he assembled Stravinsky practically represented We keenly look forward to hearing and that 1972 program. (Besides, his modernity, the contemporary made seeing our favorite musicians doing what seven-part Stravinsky salute ten years manifest. He said as much verbatim they do best — particularly at Bernstein’s later—with the National Symphony during a 1957 Omnibus lecture on beloved summer festivals: Tanglewood, Orchestra and co-led with Michael “modern music,” during which he Schleswig Holstein Music Festival, and Tilson Thomas—comes closer to a proffered Stravinsky as a musical the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo. true conspectus.) What is more prob- Janus—someone who built upon the Ravinia, too, has some Bernstein-related able, then, is that Bernstein saw him- musical traditions of the past but surprises in store. self reflected in those three pieces. A flipped them in unexpected ways. Our 50th anniversary celebration of rhythmically driving, choreographed In one example, Bernstein cued MASS continues; in this issue, we revisit work that, for better or worse, over- the orchestra in the final chord of composer Daron Hagen’s brilliant, shadowed the rest of his output (West the Symphony of Psalms: After an engaging analysis of “Simple Song,” Side Story). A pseudo-narrative piano hour of harmonic meandering, it which reveals why the song is actually not concerto (the Symphony No. 2, The concludes with a sonorous C major so simple at all. Age of Anxiety). A psalm setting chord in root position. “Hear that?” Two of Bernstein’s most beloved col- proudly reclaiming his oft-persecut- Bernstein asks, turning to the camera. leagues have recently joined him in the ed faith (Chichester Psalms). That’s “Basic musical material made new by great beyond: his indispensable television nothing to say of the myriad idiom- genius.” director of the Young People’s Concerts, atic influences Bernstein sopped up Music appreciation campaigns Roger Englander; and mezzo soprano from the elder composer. aside, Bernstein was not a hugely Pr Christa Ludwig, whom Bernstein revered At first glance, Bernstein and vociferous Stravinsky advocate—cer- elude, Fugue & Riffs as a consummate artist, and also trea- Stravinsky are not aesthetic bedfel- tainly not compared to his cham- sured as a true friend. How fortunate we lows. But spiritual ones? As the 1972 pioning of Mahler, or now-iconic are that these rich collaborations are pre- memorial concert made clear, almost American symphonists. That’s served on video and audio, to comfort certainly. because Stravinsky’s music did not 2 and enliven us as we plunge forward into Like many listeners before and need advocating in the West. The ■ since, Bernstein was introduced to USSR, however, was a different story. Spring/Summer 2021 all our next iterations. J.B. Stravinsky through a recording of When Bernstein and the New York the Rite. Then 15 years old, he was Philharmonic programmed The Rite of Spring for their State Department– funded tour of the Soviet Union in 1959, Stravinsky’s home country had 2 Bernstein and Stravinsky: Eternal Modernists Bernstein once called the Russian composer “the last great father-figure of Western music.” If that’s the case, Bernstein was his prodigal son. BEN GREENHAUS. COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MUSIC DIVISION BEN GREENHAUS. COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY not heard the work in its full orches- tral version for thirty years. True to the tour’s diplomatic (and in no small part propagandistic) aspirations, Bernstein and the Philharmonic emphasized American and Russian composers; the Rite was an obvious choice, having just been recorded by Bernstein and the Philharmonic the year before for Columbia Records. But, in echoes of its 1913 pre- miere, the Rite ended up causing a greater furor than intended. One Moscow critic, already rankled by Bernstein’s direct addresses to the crowd (“How dare Bernstein lecture on music to a Soviet audience?”), took particular umbrage with his pass- ing equation of the Rite’s premiere to the 1917 October Revolution—a blithe comparison that was tanta- mount to political sacrilege. The pearl-clutching likely aimed to distract from an uncomfortable truth: An American had been the one to intro- duce a nearly half-century old Russian masterwork to Soviet audiences. (The Philharmonic’s performances the impossible and enraptured Soviet was so vast that he not only borrowed Leonard Bernstein of Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano audiences, as well. from everyone but also composed for with composer Igor Stravinsky, and Winds on the same program—a The successes of the Soviet tour— everyone,” Bernstein continued in his 1946. piano-forward work Bernstein would nay, of Bernstein and Stravinsky’s statement. “In this way, he captured have gravitated towards, as he did the musicianship, writ large—make it the imagination of the whole world.” Capriccio—were also believed to be tempting to trot out the “U word.” So it was for them both. ■ Soviet premieres.) Whether he knew The dramatically differing reports of it or not, Bernstein had staged an that 1959 Moscow concert, however, Hannah Edgar writes about classical, unspeakably embarrassing scene by make it clear that musical “univer- jazz, and experimental music for the programming Stravinsky’s music. sality” is far too culturally ordained Chicago Tribune, among other pub- Party line aside, something stuck to exist in a literal sense. That said, lications. Pr with the attendees of those fateful Stravinsky—with his chameleonic elude, Fugue & Riffs concerts. According to American sensibilities and multinational per- 1“A Note on Stravinsky’s Variety,” type- journalists in attendance, audiences script, Box 71, Folder 30, LBC at LOC. spective—came pretty damn close. In 2 greeted The Rite of Spring enthusi- For more, see Phil Gentry’s “Leonard his 1972 eulogy, Bernstein called him Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety: A Great astically, and in the years to follow, “probably the most universal compos- American Symphony during McCarthyism” the work slowly, cautiously crept 3 er who ever lived”—“most,” perhaps, in American Music. Olga Manulkina Spring/Summer 2021 back into some corners of the Soviet in the Icarian sense of striving for the expounds upon the 1959 tour’s influence on 3 repertory. Bernstein’s inclination to impossible. That alone was enough to Rite programming in the Soviet Union in educate, to introduce, and to enthuse “Leonard Bernstein’s 1959 Triumph in the exalt him to the philanthropic, all-en- Soviet Union,” from The Rite of Spring at certainly charmed American concert- compassing, ever-dreaming Bernstein. 100 (Indiana University Press: 2017). goers. Now, it seemed he had done “The range of his musical embrace 3 New Sony Box Set: Bernstein Conducts Stravinsky In remembrance of the great com- Then in 1947, after conducting it of the Firebird Suite (1919 ver- poser Igor Stravinsky (June 17, 1882– again at Tanglewood with Boston sion): “a must-have” (MusicWeb April 6, 1971) Symphony players, Bernstein record- International).