Many American composers
owed much to Leonard Bernstein for his
charismatic championship of their music.
The largest harvest of these recordings
was made for CBS and many of these have
found their way into the CD realm through
Sony Classics. Highlights among those
many recordings of the rarer pieces
are the E.B. Hill Prelude, Diamond
Symphony No. 4, the Third Symphonies
of Roy Harris and William Schuman and
the irrepressibly lively Randall Thompson
Second Symphony. Most of these were
made with the NYPO in the 1960s; some
in the 1950s.
While the CBS legacy
is very much the rich tap-vein there
is bound to be curiosity about his late
harvest from 1982 onwards with Deutsche
Grammophon. Those discs did not hold
the catalogue all that well so the time
is more than ripe for a fresh appraisal.
They were made with a variety of orchestras
and most of them are taken down from
live performances. They are all the
more valuable because they catch Bernstein
without the contrivance and artificiality
of the studio to stand between us and
his audience. The only studio exception
is Copland’s Quiet City on CD2.
Taking the Gershwin
Rhapsody for a start, Bernstein
repeats his party piece of both playing
the piano and directing the LAPO at
Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco
in July 1982. His approach to the piece
is another example of Bernstein’s idiosyncratically
expansive approach. The sound is very
good and clear but this is not the most
lively version. I now prefer the Tilson
Thomas version for piano and jazz band
(Sony Classics). Almost certainly as
an encore Bernstein plays Prelude no.
2 for piano. By contrast the weightily
broad Barber Adagio running
to 10:05 works superlatively well -
grave and resonant - the LAPO strings
sincere and glowing rather than Hollywood
slick and chrome. Maisky is always worth
hearing and his version of Bloch’s
Schelomo is soulful. It was recorded
with the cello very much up-front at
the Frederic R. Mann Auditorium, Tel
Aviv during June 1988 and when first
issued in
1990 it was coupled with the Dvořák
Cello Concerto. The sound is healthy
and various details in this problematic
work came into sharp focus for me for
the first time. Criticism of the problematic
sound of the recording when first issued
seems to have resulted in remedial
work. The detail of the orchestra is
rendered with satisfying transparency
revealing the work’s almost sinister
dialogue.
Copland was
very much a mainstay of Bernstein’s
CBS catalogue although the composer
himself made more recordings of his
own music for that label. Bernstein
recorded Copland’s Third Symphony for
the last time with his own orchestra
at Avery Fisher Hall, New York in December
1985. This is given a weighty reading
especially apparent in the fourth of
the four movements in which extensive
use of Fanfare for the Common Man
is used. It is all perhaps rather
oppressive and hectoring but a memento
of the times when democracy was under
threat and reflecting a grip on idealism
amongst the squalor and tragedy of a
world at war. It is given an imposing
recording with a more believable aural
landscape than the equivalent CBS-Sony
version from the 1960s. Quiet City
is a dialogue between English Horn
and Trumpet. The traditional full orchestra
Appalachian Spring suite is given
a tenderly limned reading with every
detail registering with often tellingly
gentle effect. It is here presented
in a single track playing 26:36. It
is good to hear this version again from
time to time but I do prefer Copland’s
own version of the full ballet for thirteen
instruments. The suite was recorded
at the same LAPO concerts as the Gershwin
Rhapsody. It is presented without
any of the personality overlay felt
in the Gershwin. This second CD is extremely
generously packed seconds over the 80
minute threshold.
More Copland follows
on CD3. In fact Copland has by far the
largest representation in the box with
two CDs dedicated to him. Made four
years after the Third Symphony recording
Bernstein and the NYPO allowed the DG
engineering team into the Avery Fisher
Hall again in October 1989 and CD3 is
the result. In El Salon Mexico Bernstein
is in his element with music that could
have been written for him. Certainly
he knew the score intimately having
prepared the piano reduction for the
composer from the full score shortly
after it had been written. from The
recording is spectacular and the bass
drum thwacks at 10:53 still vibrate
the light fittings and reverberate against
the rib-cage. Stanley Drucker by then
an old-timer with the NYPO gives a most
tender, kindly, mercurial and virtuosic
reading of the Clarinet Concerto. Drucker’s
way with the more lyrically singing
music had me reconsidering my prejudices
against this work. This is by the far
the best recording of it that I have
heard. The five part suite Copland called
Music for the Theatre is spare,
Stravinskian, circus-brash and humane.
The languid singer can be heard in the
lazy stroll in the third movement of
the five. The disc traces Copland’s
progress from the accessible Salon
via stages of sophistication until
we reach the ultima thule of
Connotations which is both imposing
and thorny; one of Copland’s serial
compositions. Was he really such a dedicated
follower of fashion? It remains a vivid
and anguished testament.
Moving away from the
fashionable mainstream Bernstein returned
to record for a second time a work that
in its salty massed strings influenced
Bernstein’s own First Symphony Jeremiah,
the Roy Harris Third Symphony.
This fine work Bernstein would have
learnt from his mentor Koussevitsky
who himself recorded the symphony for
RCA. Would that Bernstein had also taken
up the Harris Seventh Symphony. The
tautness and intensity of this present
version is slightly inferior to the
recordings Bernstein made for CBS and
which are available with Randall Thompson
2 and Schuman 3 on a single CD. Nevertheless
the luminously plangent and glowingly
weighty sound makes hearing this Harris
3 a real pleasure. The evolutionary
uncoiling of lyrical woodwind phrases
at 8.02 and the light-filled writing
between 08.00 and 0900 communicates
with great beauty. The engineers happily
articulated the magical translucency
of this score complete with the softly
resonating strikes of the vibraphone
at 0910. They also put across the massed
string and brass episodes which abound
including the feral dance at 13.05 onwards.
The work ends as if with a premonition
of a world soon to be at war. The William
Schuman symphony is an even stronger
work with compelling claims on the attention
and repeat listening time of anyone
interested in the 20th century symphony.
Those searing long string lines groan
and sing in light and in darkness. There
are steely angularities, clamorous brass,
sinister woodwind dances at (tr.5 00.48)
and an irresistibly exciting Toccata
finale where apocalypse vies with victory.
This is overlaid at the close with a
typically vibrant thrumming powerhouse
of energy goaded on by eruptive trumpets
and the side-drum’s metalled band-shots,
vibrant and rhythmically intricate.
This music positively flies in glory
and is part of an international heritage
which everyone should claim. Originally
the two Thirds were issued together
on one CD from a concert at Avery Fisher
in December 1985 on 419 780-2GH. Here
the two symphonies are joined by Schuman’s
busily detailed American Festival
Overture suitably marked allegro
con spirito. It is more raucous
fun than sustenance. Such a pity that
another work that Bernstein premiered
with the NYPO in 1968 was never commercially
recorded. What a superb opportunity
was lost in not recording Howard Hanson’s
Sixth Symphony from 1968; every bit
the equal of the Harris and Schuman
symphonies.
The Fifth disc is all-Ives
and is a direct take from 429 220-2GH
recorded in Avery Fisher between 1986
and 1987. After the Second Symphony
with its rambunctiously non-conformist
finale there are a number of rare works
before we get to Central Park in
the Dark and The Unanswered Question.
The Gong on the Hook manages
to be at once gripping, threatening
and discordant. Tone Roads No. 1
makes you at first think that it
is going to be simply jaunty. However
it soon becomes angular and anxious.
Hymn No. 1 is a touching piece
and comparatively straightforward in
its way with More Love to Thee.
Hallowe’en has the soloistic
strings taking eldritch fugal wing before
orchestral piano and percussion join
the Walpurgis-mêlée. To
break the mood Ives ends the piece with
an anarchic couple of gesture chords
snatched from Beethoven. These are fascinating
pieces the more attractive because of
their enigmatic concision. Then we get
those two masterpieces: the mystery
of Central Park in the Dark and
an American Tallis in the shape
of The Unanswered Question. In
the latter the strings are recorded
with moving sensitivity and the meditative
mood is superbly sustained; such remarkable
concentration.
The last disc matches
Del Tredici (well known for his sequence
of Alice works - whatever happened
to them - will anyone revive them?)
with the two contemporaries Rorem and
Foss. It’s a valuable disc. What to
make of the Del Tredici? It’s
in the nature of a self-indulgent concerto
for orchestra, tonal, brilliant and
seething with incident and not with
anything remotely serial or dodecaphonic.
The second movement Omaggio alludes
to Mahler and Paganini. Rorem’s
six movement Violin Concerto is lyrical
with cross-winds from Berg modestly
caught in the rigging. Rorem also wrote
a piano concerto in six movements. Would
that Bernstein had taken up Rorem’s
early orchestral fantasies Lions
and Eagles. They certainly
drew championship from Stokowski, Kunzel
and Torkanowsky and are most beautiful
works - especially Lions which
in its slightly dreamy-dissonant way
can be seen as an evolution from Griffes’
masterpiece The Pleasure Dome of
Kubla Khan. It’s also a pity that
Bernstein did not record the Rorem works
he took up in the concert hall such
as the 1978 suite Sunday Morning.
The Romance and Midnight movements
of the Concerto are lyrical and approachable.
The haywire spider-web scattiness of
the brief Toccata is attractive
although not perhaps taken as marked
by the composer: Very Fast. The
finale Dawn relates back to the
first movement. Foss’s Song
of Songs has not been issued previously.
It is a four movement half hour song
cycle (for which the words are provided
in full in the booklet). The recording
is here issued for the very first time.
It was written in 1946. The soprano
role is taken by American soprano Sheri
Greenawald; now artistic director of
San Francisco Opera. The tape was taken
from a performance in Paris in 1986.
The style is florid, word-repetitive,
lyrical-dramatic and rather like Samuel
Barber without quite his total romantic
saturation. The songs track through
awakening, the urgent contentment of
young love, the pain of separation and
the testament of confidence in the redeeming
reuniting power of love. It is by no
means as sensuous as Barber (and he
could be very sensuous as we know from
the intensely erotic orchestral song
cycle The Lovers - Koch 3-7125-2H1)
or Rorem. His style is a sort of hybrid
of Barber, Copland’s Tender Land
and Tippett in the more lyrical
passages in A Child of Our Time.
There are attractive things here but
it is not totally successful. I am not
at all sure that the musical material
consistently has the distinction or
memorability factor that makes the work
utterly magnetic and Ms Greenawald has
an operatic fruitiness that is not wholly
consonant with the mood of the words.
There is a good if
pretty succinct note by David Gutman.
We get plenty of discographical detailing
and there are Bernstein and soloist
photos. Was it a DG or Bernstein thing
that the photos taken have Bernstein
striking Karajan-like poses. The cover
photo in particular recalls Karajan’s
self-absorption.
Essential listening
for Bernstein adherents and for anyone
who has already fallen for the American
Adventure. Bernstein’s adroit no-holds-barred
approach to music-making establishes
new friends for old favourites and fresh
discoveries. Performances vivid and
often brimming with life. Bernstein
brought to this repertoire the unbridled
spirit he brought to his ground-breaking
Mahler; nothing dutiful or workaday.
Rob Barnett
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 474 940-2 [56:30 + 80:56
+ 74:06 + 60:42 + 67:34 + 70:14] 
