Symposium 1372, 78:23 [Distrib. by Albany] **** :
The “triple threat” of Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) is captured on these historic shellacs from 1946-1947, wherein we hear the all-American maestro as pianist, composer, and conductor, roles he could assume with flair and astonishing energy. The inscription of the Copland Piano Sonata (22 January 1947) has its crackles and dynamic inconsistencies, but it does not lack for percussive, pungent commitment. Bernstein’s right hand can imitate a machine gun as well as anyone; he can execute flurries of repeated and staccato notes with ringing, stinging authority. He lays a hard, sometimes molten, uncompromising surface upon the Copland, its bluesy, syncopated meditations notwithstanding its often bleak, pre-War ethos.
An entirely happier sound emanates from Ravel’s peppy G Major Concerto (1 July 1946), performed and conducted from the keyboard with the Philharmonia of London, a la Mitropoulos. The first movement’s meditative episodes brilliantly explode into Gershwinesque jazz riffs, galloping and strutting, piano and brass jamming in frisky colloquy. The blues elements–trying hard to become Rhapsody in Blue–melt in gorgeous colors, especially as the harp holds sway. The music crescendos with frothy aplomb, the piano making bass strides that run upward to the trumpet and flute, the whole cascading into a whipped Parisian broth by way of Bourbon Street. The singing Adagio assai proceeds with Old World nostalgia, the flute and clarinet adding a bucolic pathos to the plaintive waltz-march as it moves ineluctably through eddies bittersweet. The Presto might provide musical commentary for a Chaplin short, acrobatics peppering every bar. If ever Ravel made a bow to Saint-Saens, it is here, in this flippant, circus movement of colorful audacities.
Bernstein’s association with the Boston Symphony extends back to his Harvard days as a student of Reiner and Koussevitzky; this inscription of Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat (11 August 1947) was made at the Concert Theater, Tanglewood, Lenox, Massachusetts. Concertmaster Richard Burgin brings considerable, frisky energy to his solo violin parts, especially in the Tango, Valse and Ragtime. Even without the anti-war, anti-meliorist sarcasm of the Ramuz libretto, the jazzy sarcasm of the Marche royale, Trois danses, and Petit concert allow Burgin and trumpet Roger Voison to strut and sachet their mockeries of materialism and false bravado. Some sloughing off of the transferred sound in the Valse, but the essential, post-World War I irreverence shines through. The wild Devil’s Dance and Grand choral still make tricky playing, and even after 60 years, these BSO virtuosi’s hot riffs warrant admiration. The last selection, The Triumphal March of the Devil, well speaks for the frenzied, clamorous energies smoldering in what passed as The Lost Generation.
Bernstein sits at the keyboard (17 November 1947) once more to play five of his Seven Anniversaries, each celebrating a distinct personage in Bernstein’s life and career: Aaron Copland; Shirley Bernstein; (In Memoriam) Alfred Eisner; Paul Bowles; and (In Memoriam) Natalie Koussevitzky. The energetic, clarion staccati for sister Shirley say much of her feisty personality. The Eisner and Koussevitzky pieces both are elegies, slightly redolent of Ravel. The Bowles portrait combines recitativo and syncopated figures, disarmingly attractive, like the author of The Sheltering Sky.
–Gary Lemco
