Questions on the Text

1. What have you learnt from the essay "Some Musical En­counters"? How are the personalities of such great conductors as Toscanini and Stokowsky described in the memoirs of their contemporary?

2. Find in the text a passage describing Klemperer's and Walter's methods of working with the orchestra. In what aspects did they differ?

3. How is Stravinsky's musical personality described in the mem­oirs?

4. Find in the text passages in which the problem of tempo is discussed. How do you understand Steinberg's statement: "I still prefer my own wrong tempi to the wrong tempi of my colleagues"? Do you share his views? Who, in your opinion, is to establish criteria?

5. What innovations did Stokowsky introduce?

6. What were Beecham's ways of dealing with the orchestra? What do you know about Beecham's contribution to the de­velopment of orchestral playing in England?

LEONARD BERNSTEIN

Versatility in an artist can be a disadvantage, for it tends to blur the general public appreciation of his work and delays a proper evaluation. For some people, such versatility implies a lack of depth. If the artist also does not possess a clear notion of what he has to achieve, the many facets of his work can dissipate his energy.

That Bernstein is versatile is not disputed: as a conductor his repertoire is wider than that of any of comparable stature; as a pi­anist he is certainly of virtuoso standard and as a composer he has made significant contributions to the myriad genres he has essayed, from serious concert pieces to works for the "music theatre". In ad­dition, Bernstein is a noted communicator and propagator for the arts in general and music in particular.

Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts on August 25th 1918 and took his first piano lessons at the comparatively late age of ten. His progress was remarkable for he entered the New England Conservatoire at thirteen, continuing his piano studies with three teachers. In 1935 he entered Harvard University. His most famous teacher, for counterpoint and fugue was Walter Piston - indeed there was no finer in the USA. Bernstein graduated from Harvard in 1939 having already made his debut there as a conductor and pianist and in 1940 became a student of Serge Koussevitsky. He also did post­graduate work at the Curtis Institute of Music, studying conducting under Fritz Reiner and in 1942 he was appointed assistant to Kous­sevitsky at Tanglewood.* In 1942/3 Bernstein led a varied eighteen months: pursuing his ambition to be a conductor, he also composed his magnificent Clarinet Sonata and Symphony No. 1 (Jeremiah) for soprano and orchestra. On August 25th 1943 Bernstein was appointed Assistant Conductor of the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York. On November 14th 1943 Bernstein made his sensational debut with the New York Philharmonic (as it became) deputising at less than twenty four hours notice for an ailing Bruno Walter. In one sense the rest is history, for few conducting debuts can ever have been so triumphant or given under such fraught circumstances. Had Bernstein merely acquitted himself well it is most unlikely that his subsequent career would have developed at the pace it did, but such was his total command of the orchestra, so clearly did he stamp his own personality on the performances, so assuredly did he demon­strate his grasp of the essential features of bis task, and so vividly show his considerable interpretative rifts that it was clear to every­one in the Carnegie Hall audience that they had witnessed a wholly remarkable and indeed historic event. Within a very short while Bernstein's name was on everyone's lips, not only as a conductor but also as a composer. In this last capacity 1944 was a most im­portant year for in January he conducted the première of the First Symphony in Pittsburg, in May that of the ballet Fancy Free in

New York and towards the end of the year his first great musical On The Town also in New York.

In 1945 he was appointed music director of the New York Sym­phony Orchestra, his programmes being notable for their wide catholicity* of taste and the following year made his first foreign tour as a conductor, appearing with the Czech Philharmonic in Prague (in two concerts of all-American music) and the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall, conducting Fancy Free at Covent Garden during the same visit. A month later back in the USA he conducted the American première of Britten's Peter Grimes (commissioned by Koussevitsky, and of which Bernstein was to have conducted the world première in the USA).

His compositions at this time climaxed with the Symphony No. 2 The Age of Anxiety for piano and orchestra which Bernstein premiered under Koussevitsky with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in April 1949. In 1965 Bernstein revised the Symphony, particularly the finale, which was improved by this attention. Bernstein conducted another important world première with the Boston Symphony Or­chestra at the end of 1949, Messiaen's Turangalila-Symphonie.

In 1952 his magnificent one-act chamber opera Trouble in Tahiti appeared. Trouble in Tahiti is an utterly unique work and is, in its own way, a masterpiece. Bernstein wrote his own libretto. In 1953 he became the first American to conduct at La Scala in a perfor­mance of Cherubini's Medea with Callas which the diva regarded as one of the high artistic achievements of her career.

In 1955 Bernstein returned to La Scala for La Somnambula and La Boheme, and his operetta Candide was premiered the following year. By this time he had moved record labels from RCA (when his first recording of Schumann's Second Symphony, still the greatest interpretation ever committed to disc, showed his qualities to the widest international audience) to CBS, and during the best part of the next twenty years he made hundreds of records with the New York Philharmonic for that company, of which orchestra he became musical director in 1958. Bernstein was forty, widely experienced and a charismatic personality. Like Stokowski forty five years before he instituted some daring experiments, not all of them successful, but each one guaranteered to keep the affairs of the New York Phil­harmonic of interest to all sections of the media. Almost exactly a year before, in September 1957, Bernstein conducted the opening night of his greatest stage work West Side Story, quite clearly a work of genius.

Whatever one may think of Bernstein's ability, and only the non-musical would deny his great gifts, he has fearlessly used his position and influence to promote much music which had been neglected. Of all the composers Bernstein promoted in this way, above all his championship of Mahler must take pride of place.

For many people, Bernstein is Mahler, possessing rare qualities which place his interpretation of this composer's music out of the

ordinary. Both were great conductors who were men of the theatre; both conducted the same orchestra and those musicians who saw both conduct attested to their remarkable similarities in matters of technique; both were composer-conductors and both were of Jewish background. In addition, Bernstein was the same age when he recorded the Mahler symphonies that Mahler was when they were written: no other conductor possessed this unique combination of qualities with regard to the interpretation of Mahler's music. It should also be remembered that Bernstein was the first conductor to record a complete Mahler symphony cycle; he has recorded a second cycle on video with the Vienna Philharmonic.

Like all great conductors, there are several composers in whose music Bernstein excels, Mahler of course, but his Beethoven is exceptional as indeed is his Haydn. From the romantic repertoire, Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, Brahms' Fourth Symphony and Liszt's Faust Symphony (which he has recorded twice) have always been outstanding interpretations. Bernstein's range of sympathy with twentieth century music is wholly remarkable, having given thirty six world premieres with the New York Philharmonic, and having be­come world famous for his performance of music by Stravinsky, Hindemith and Bartok.

His championship of American music has always been consider­able, and his performances of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue which he directs from the keyboard is another famous item in his reper­toire, one of about ten piano concertos Bernstein has played and recorded. It is a pity that he has not developed this aspect of his art for he is a pianist of considerable calibre, early in his career having given a first performance of Copland's Piano Sonata. Since 1963, the year of his Third Symphony (not really in the same class as its predecessors) he has devoted less time to composition.

In 1971 his remarkable Mass opened the John F. Kennedy Cen­ter of Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. This is a controversial work, but a genuine one, which contains Bernstein's finest music and shows his power at creating compelling music over long time-spans. This was followed by several major works during the next half dozen years: the big ballet Dybbuk, the musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Songfest (a cycle for six singers and orchestra, and Three Meditations for cello and orchestra (for Rostropovitch) based on ma­terial from Mass. Of late Bernstein has spent much time in Vienna, where he is greatly admired. His recent complete Beethoven cycle (his second complete cycle - some individual symphonies he has recorded as many as four times) with the Vienna Philharmonic is, likе most of his recordings nowadays, taken from live performances.

But recently we have had possibly this most prolific of all recording conductors greatest performance on disc: the complete recording of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, worthy to take its place alongside the two previous greatest recordings of the music-drama by

Furtwängler and Böhm. Bernstein's genius is here demonstrated at its most profound.¹

From: Music & Musicians, 1986. Abridged

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1055