Leonard Bernstein: An American in Paris—Music of
Berlioz, Milhaud, Schumann, Bloch, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, and Bernstein. Orchestre National de
France conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Warner Classics. $24.98 (7 CDs).
Hagiography appears inevitable in
centenary celebrations. Certainly Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) is coming in
for his share of it – much of it deserved. Bernstein could be described as a
musical polymath: an internationally respected conductor, a composer of
traditional and modern classical music and of popular and show music that seems
to be standing the test of time, a very fine pianist, a superb educator who
used TV as the educational medium that its early proponents hoped it could
become, and more. Although Bernstein’s conducting career is most closely
associated with the New York Philharmonic, he conducted, often with
considerable aplomb, a variety of other orchestras – including, in the
mid-and-late 1970s, Orchestre National de France. Warner Classics has done a
genuine service to 21st-century music lovers by producing a boxed
set of very well remastered versions of many Bernstein performances with this
orchestra – plus some first-ever releases of material recorded live in concert,
and even a set of four rehearsal excerpts. The result is an exceptionally
well-rounded portrayal of Bernstein with this orchestra and in this time period
– and there is some excellent music-making as well.
Note, however, that “some.” You would
never know it from the enclosed booklet, which mentions the music not at all
and includes only comments from musicians that praise Bernstein to the skies as
if he represented the second coming of all that is great in the musical world,
but the performances here are decidedly a mixed bag – as were Bernstein’s
performances in general. Thus, the genuine service to music lovers that this
set presents is not necessarily the one it is intended to present: it shows
Bernstein’s very considerable podium gifts, and a touch of his pianistic skill
as well, while also making some of his shortcomings clear. Ironically, this
makes the seven-CD, nearly seven-hour-long set all the more worth having for
anyone who wonders just what made Bernstein so special, so popular, and at
times so controversial.
Two of the discs are devoted to Berlioz,
and one of them is a real winner: Harold
en Italie, with violist Donald McInnes, is elegant, soulful, and much more
symphonically connected (it is essentially a symphony with viola obbligato)
than in most performances. The middle movements, in particular, have delicacy
of expression and, in the third, some simple and outright joy that make the
contrast with the longer and more-dramatic outer movements all the better. But Symphonie fantastique, whose Romantic
excess would seem a perfect match for Bernstein’s personal ebullience and
sometimes over-large personality, is rather surprisingly tame in its last two
movements. The first three are excellent, with an unusually slow Un bal that Bernstein makes convincing
and a very extended Scène aux champs
that hangs together surprisingly well. But Marche
au supplice, although it starts dramatically enough, is almost understated
at the end, just when one would expect Bernstein to make it over-the-top. And
the bizarre elements of the final Witches’ Sabbath are by and large downplayed,
with the exception of the church bells, whose first entry is genuinely chilling
and whose repeated tolling makes the atmosphere very eerie indeed. But somehow
the final movement never quite coalesces or, more to the point, climaxes with
the sort of conclusion that, in the best performances, can leave audiences
gasping. It is all right, certainly, and the orchestra plays quite well for
Bernstein (throughout this entire set, in fact), but this
conductor-with-a-flair-for-the-dramatic never quite lets everything go as far
as it can here.
The disc of Milhaud’s music, on the other
hand, is first-rate throughout. It includes La
Création du monde, Le Bœuf sur le toit, and four of the 12 Saudades do Brasil. Despite the boxed
set’s title, it includes no Gershwin, but on this CD Bernstein shows his flair
for jazz and the jazzy very clearly indeed. And the orchestra plays these
century-old works as if they are brand-new, their rhythms and harmonies
sparkling and their storytelling bright and polished. Bernstein is also in top
form on a CD featuring cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who was himself to become
an adequate if not especially distinguished conductor in later years. Here
Bernstein’s interpretative finesse, along with that of Rostropovich, takes two
dissimilar works and highlights considerable emotional resonance between them.
They are Schumann’s Cello Concerto and Bloch’s Schelomo, both of which come across here as extended fantasies. The
approach works somewhat better in the Bloch than the Schumann, which some
listeners will likely find overextended and rhythmically a touch flabby. But
this CD shows tremendous rapport between soloist and conductor, and even an
interpretation that may not be to everyone’s liking helps make the Bernstein
portrait within this boxed set more complete.
Less rapport is in evidence with Alexis
Weissenberg, who is heard in Rachmaninoff’s Piano
Concerto No. 3. It is hard to know whether Weissenberg or Bernstein was the
driving force in the shaping of this performance, but the two do not seem to
mesh as well as Bernstein does with Rostropovich. Perhaps Bernstein, himself a
pianist, had some ideas with which Weissenberg did not see eye-to-eye. In any
case, this reading shows one of the downsides of Bernstein’s conducting:
listeners who enjoy it will call it expansive, but most will more likely find
it bloated and at times just plain slow (Bernstein did have a habit of
conducting the music of some composers, notably Beethoven, unusually slowly).
This is a 40-minute concerto that here runs almost 47 minutes, and listeners
who know the music may well find themselves repeatedly and fecklessly asking
the musicians to, please, pick up the pace.
The Rachmaninoff CD contains material that
is more interesting than the concerto, though: four excerpts from 1975
rehearsal sessions of music by Ravel, including Alborada del gracioso, Shéhérazade, Piano Concerto in G, and La Valse. Listeners have to know French
to follow what Bernstein tells the orchestra, but even those who do not know
the language will appreciate the meticulousness with which Bernstein approaches
even the smallest detail of the music, going over and over and over the same
passage until eventually, satisfied as regards a bit of the concerto, he says,
with a sigh, Gott sei dank. No need
to be an expert in German to understand that.
Elsewhere, dissatisfied with a portion of La
Valse, Bernstein lapses into English, “No good, no good, no good.” But in
the half-hour-plus of rehearsal material, he is actually remarkably positive in
his comments most of the time, shaping the performances gently but firmly. The
insight into his rehearsal style is a highlight of this entire release.
Ravel is the primary focus of the final
two CDs in this set, with the four works heard in rehearsal given in their
entirety in performances, and joined by Tzigane
for violin and orchestra (Boris Belkin is the violinist) and Boléro, which is heard immediately after
La Valse in an excellent
juxtaposition: here are pieces in which Bernstein really does cut loose, and
the result is thrilling and involving. Marilyn Horne’s warm, elegant soprano
voice in Shéhérazade beautifully
evokes the dreamlike word painting of Tristan Klingsor, although listeners will
have to find the texts online, since, as noted, there is nothing about the
music included in this set. Piano
Concerto in G features Bernstein himself as soloist, and listening to the
whole piece after hearing Bernstein rehearse some of it (playing with the
orchestra part of the time and deliberately not
playing at other times) adds considerable depth to an interpretation that is
excellent in all respects. Clearly, something in Bernstein resonated to Ravel, and
the affinity became especially deep when he performed Ravel’s music with a
quintessentially French orchestra – and live in concert, where the two final
CDs were recorded. The seven-disc set concludes with two suites by Bernstein
himself, both of which show just how fully he understood the more-popular side
of music and incorporated classical training and thinking into it. One suite is
drawn from Bernstein’s music for the film On
the Waterfront, and the other, inevitably, is Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story,” whose nine movements
encapsulate Bernstein’s most-famous composition while standing very effectively
on their own in the concert hall. This exceptionally well-priced set, if
intended primarily to elevate Bernstein to an unapproachable level, falls a bit
short on that score (which is to say, with these scores). But really,
hagiographic impulses aside, Bernstein was a supremely talented and
multifaceted musician, although scarcely one who was unequaled in everything he
did. There is enough excellent music-making here to remind listeners familiar
with Bernstein of why he was so widely admired and why his conducting style was not to everyone’s taste. It turns
out that he, like everyone else, had manifest strengths and evident weaknesses.
That is not at all a bad thing to learn from this very welcome and
much-appreciated release.
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