Composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein would be 100 this weekend, and we couldn't let the date pass without marking the event with a playlist of our favourite pieces. And it only seemed right to get contributions from our friends at the Leonard Bernstein Office and the very people who knew him best, his children, Jamie, Alexander and Nina.

Chichester Psalms

Alison Karlin (Bachtrack): On my way home from choir I turned on the radio and came across an extrordinary choral piece completely unknown to me. Commissioned by Chichester Cathedral and based on the Psalms of King David in Hebrew, the central part is sung either by a counter tenor or a boy soprano to echo the voice of David himself. Here is Bernstein in his role as conductor.

 

Serenade

Nina Bernstein Simmons (LB's daughter, remembering 14 year old Midori's performance at Tanglewood in 1986):

In the middle of the last movement, she broke a string. Unfazed, she reached to the concertmaster who gave her his violin. On the podium, my father paused only long enough for the switch to take place and quickly resumed. Then, incredibly, she broke a string on that violin, too. She reached out again to the concertmaster, who was by now playing the associate concertmaster's violin, and she finished the piece on that instrument. All without missing a note.

Based on Plato's Symposium, Serenade explores the subject of love in all its myriad forms. Somehow Midori knew the giddiness of infatuation, the fury of discord, and the anguish of a broken heart.

 

Candide: “Glitter and be Gay”

David Karlin (Bachtrack): The true genius of operetta is to make you laugh, make you cry, make you nostalgic and dazzle you with vocal pyrotechnics all at the same time. “Glitter and be gay”, from Bernstein’s Candide, does it better than anyone: he gives Voltaire’s ingénue Cunegonde an intoxicating mix of Broadway and bel canto coloratura. The incomparable Scarlett Strallen pulls it off superbly, with irreproachable classical technique allied to a perfect balance of comedy, skittishness and ironic tragedy – all with a cut-glass accent to make a duchess proud.

 

Arias and Barcarolles – 5. Greeting

Alexander Bernstein (LB's son): The entire song cycle, Arias and Barcarolles, is wonderful, but I'm particularly partial to “Greeting”. A beautiful tune, it was originally written on the occasion of my birth in 1955.

 

Missa Brevis

Nicolas Schotter (Bachtrack): Bernstein's Missa Brevis is quite unique compared to his other choral works, especially his Chichester Psalms. Behind its Medieval and Renaissance blend, one can sense the mastery and playful way in which Bernstein combines these elements with his very personal style. The result is nothing short of a small jewel of contrapunctal work.

 

Dybbuk

Jacob Slattery (Leonard Bernstein Office): After seeing On The Town, Fancy Free, and West Side Story, it’s hard to imagine that Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins wrote a ballet about a soul-sucking demon on a vengeful quest to possess his former lover. Dybbuk marked Bernstein and Robbins’ final collaboration, and a year after the ballet premiered, Robbins checked himself into a psychiatric hospital for depression. 

Dybbuk’s story alone makes for a fascinating and suspenseful thriller, but Bernstein’s score offers a side of the composer we don’t often hear. He dove deep into Kabbalistic numerology for inspiration and therefore made use of octatonic and dodecaphonic scales. We think of LB as a tonal composer, but he also experimented in harmony, especially in the early 1970s. Bernstein adapted the score into two suites, and in the second movement of the second suite, “Leah”, you can really start to hear the darkness come through. I recommend the “Exorcism” from the complete ballet if you want to hear things get really strange.

 

West Side Story: Symphonic Dances

Elisabeth Schwarz (Bachtrack): West Side Story and the Symphonic Dances hold many dear memories for me. When I first visited New York I went to see the musical on Broadway and when I first auditioned for an orchestra in Vienna, I had to sight-read the score of the Symphonic Dances. In his suite, Bernstein ties together nine episodes from the musical, although not necessarily in the original dramatic order. A sizzling danced confrontation between the Sharks and the Jets leads to the dream ballet “Somewhere” in which the gangs are united and to Tony’s and Maria’s first meeting. Yet, like in the musical, the gang battle climaxes in a Rumble, and the piece ends with a heartbreaking unresolved chord.

 

Songfest – IV. To What You Said

Jamie Bernstein (LB's daughter): 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was a spectacular flop; it closed in a week. My father, ever the recycler, used the show’s opening theme in his piece Songfest, for orchestra and six singers, incorporating a new text by Walt Whitman. I think it’s one of the most beautiful melodies my father ever wrote – but interestingly, in this new incarnation, the melody is in the instrumental accompaniment and hummed by the other singers, while the baritone soloist sings Walt Whitman’s words about the social taboos forbidding the poet’s expressing his love for another man.

If only my father – and Walt Whitman – could have lived long enough to see the Supreme Court legalize same-sex marriage!

 

Candide: “Make our Garden Grow”

Mark Pullinger (Bachtrack): My selection is the final scene from Candide. It’s an odd work: Is it a musical? Is it operetta? I’m not convinced Bernstein himself knew. Candide’s adventures open his eyes to challenge his belief that “all’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds” but he puts disillusionment to one side for a happy finale, marrying the materialistic Cunegonde who resolves to live the simple life, tending the garden and baking the daily loaf of bread. “We'll build our house and chop our wood and make our garden grow.” It’s Lenny at his most heart-on-sleeve and I love it.

 

A Quiet Place

Garth Sunderland (Leonard Bernstein Office): This was Leonard Bernstein’s final work for the stage, conceived with librettist Stephen Wadsworth as a sequel to Bernstein’s jazzy 1952 one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti. At its heart, A Quiet Place is the story of a father and his children grappling with their history of bitterness and anger, and ultimately attempting, tentatively, to overcome it.

The Act I postlude is one of the most beautiful things Bernstein ever wrote—it’s nearly 75 lines of counterpoint. This performance of the postlude, by Kent Nagano, is top-notch.