Leonard Bernstein, an odyssey through the record

While the film Maestro by Bradley Cooper dedicated to the life of Leonard Bernstein is playing in a few theaters on Friday December 8 before a very wide distribution on Netflix on December 20, it seemed interesting to us to look back on the musician’s career, on its phases and on its recordings striking.

For many people, Bernstein is West Side Story, a film, a soundtrack and some immortal tunes. Among Viennese musicians and music lovers, Leonard Bernstein is the musician who relearned them the symphonies of Robert Schumann and Gustav Mahler. For Americans of school age at the turn of the 1960s, he was the leading man behind television’s “Young People’s Concerts.” These one-hour educational programs on topics such as “what does music mean?” », “What makes music symphonic? » or “humor in music” formed at least two generations of music lovers, since they were broadcast on CBS for fifteen seasons, from 1958 to 1972, with four new programs, or themes, per season.

The Leonard Bernstein magnet attracted cameras and spotlights. He was often misunderstood, especially by Europeans, who snubbed him. But the first part of his career, documented with the New York Philharmonic, has been followed in the last twenty years by an astonishing European and, in particular, Viennese recognition. How does the record reflect this?

Beginnings

Leonard Bernstein’s career took off very quickly. The young man born in 1918, who studied at Harvard and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, was Rodzinski’s assistant at the New York Philharmonic during the 1943-1944 season when Bruno Walter fell ill shortly before a concert in November 1943. Bernstein successfully replaced him and began to get invited. He is also already a composer, who has to his credit a 1^D Symphony (“Jeremiah”), the ballet Fancy Free and the musical On the Town.

Bernstein’s debut in the musical world was therefore instantaneous, and at the age of 27 he recorded 78 rpm records for Victor: On the Town And Creation of the world by Milhaud in 1945, “Jeremiah” in 1946, An American in Paris by Gershwin in 1947. With his 2^e Symphony (“The Age of Anxiety”), in 1950 he moved from Victor to Columbia (CBS, now Sony), which would be his major publisher for a quarter of a century, but with, already, some escapades, including a very interesting one in 1953. These are what we call the “American Decca” recordings, which have the particularity that Bernstein recorded in 1956 analyzes of the five engraved symphonies (Beethoven, 3,Dvorák 9,Schumann 2,Brahms 4 and Tchaikovsky 6). These rarities were brought together in a box set by DG in 2004 and reissued since.

Crucially, the Columbia legacy is not loaded with monophonic recordings that would have resulted in duplicates galore. On the other hand, with the advent of stereophony, Bernstein became one of the most prolific conductors. It should be noted here that the music director of the New York Philharmonic in the 1950s was not the young Bernstein, but Dimitri Mitropoulos, one of his mentors and lovers, at least one of the earliest (Harvard 1938, according to Bernstein biographer Barry Seldes) and the most effective in his career, also the one he will betray with the most efficiency and cruelty.

For the little story that connects us to the film Maestro, according to renowned Bernstein biographer Humphrey Burton, it was Mitropoulos who, in 1951, advised Bernstein to marry in order to conceal his homosexuality from the administrators of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Indeed, it was in Boston, where another of his early mentors, Serge Koussevitzky, worked, that Bernstein conducted extensively in the 1950s. A box set of concert documents published by WHRA in 2013 retraced this period of his career.

Stereophony

Let’s get back to the music. Once Mitropoulos was released from New York, an operation facilitated by a charge mounted by the new head of the music section of the New York Times Howard Taubman in April 1956 and the retirement of administrator Arthur Judson, Bernstein became musical director in 1958. He remained until 1969, but one has the impression that this reign lasted a quarter of a century, his imprint was so important .

The year 1958 was that of the boom in stereo, and Bernstein threw himself into recording. The first stereo recording took place on January 28, 1957 in Brooklyn: the continuation of The bird of fire by Stravinsky and Romeo and Juliet by Tchaikovsky. It was published in June 1957 in mono and will be released in September 1958 in stereo.

The plethora of recordings from the period made it impossible to look back, but two discs are phenomenal: the Rite of Spring recorded in January 1958 and the Symphony of ” New world “ of April 16, 1962. The star records of the time are the 5^e Symphony by Shostakovich (1959), which he re-recorded in a unique way in 1980, the Rhapsody in Blue(1959), Billy the Kid And Rodeo by Copland (1960, followed byEl Salon Mexico And ofAppalachian Spring in 1961), West Side Story (1961) and the beginning of Mahler recordings with the Kindertoten songs by Jennie Tourel, captured in February 1960, then the 3^e Symphony in April 1961.

The Mahler cycle will obviously mark the 1960s since Bernstein is, with Solti, Haitink, Kubelik and Abravanel, the conductor who will record the first complete symphonies. It will be recalled that Columbia was already present in this market with Bruno Walter, but the latter refused to manage the Symphonies n^bone 3, 6, 7 And 8. The other composers who will be very important are Schumann then Haydn. Sibelius’s first symphony, the 5^e Symphony, was engraved in March 1961. The following year, Bernstein was instrumental in the recognition of the Dane Carl Nielsen. It records the 5^e Symphony in New York, so much so that the Danes agreed to engrave the 3^e Symphony at home in 1965.

Vienna

In the 1970s, a relationship of affection, or even more, was formed with Vienna. She is featured at CBS-Columbia through two recordings of fabulous operas: Falstaffwith Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and The Knight of the Rose with Gwyneth Jones, Christa Ludwig, and Lucia Popp.

From then on, Bernstein would become a European icon. In France at the National Orchestra, with some EMI recordings which do not quite reflect the fever of his concerts, unlike Franck and Roussel recordings at DG and, above all, in Vienna. DG made him record “the complete Beethoven of the 1980s” (slogan of the time) without realizing that digital technology was going to shake up the record market. At DG, the conductor re-records Mahler, Brahms, Schumann, Mozart, Haydn. It is also a period where he takes his time, widens the tempos. This attitude stems from a desire for musical emphasis which can go as far as emphasis. This is the difference between his complete Mahler CBS-Sony and that of DG, but the latter is so much more endearing despite the possible irritants, or precisely thanks to this uniqueness.

By emphasizing the line, Bernstein wants to “transmit”, to get the message across, which brings us back to “Young People’s Concerts”. He does it, through the alliance of mind and heart, to these children who have grown up. If Mahler is emblematic, Schumann essential, Sibelius (n^bone 1, 2, 5) and Shostakovich (n^bone 1, 6, 7, 9) stunning, we will also and above all listen again, from the DG legacy, to everything he was able to record of Haydn and Mozart.

Some performances were filmed, and we will look for the final dand the Symphony n^o 88 of Haydn in Vienna to gauge the complicity that had been established. And we will not forget two monuments: the Mass in C of Mozart and his Requiemdiscussed for the first time as a tribute — which brings us back to the film Maestro — to his wife, Felicia Montealegre. The unforgettable, unique moment is the lacrimosa. It synthesizes the art of this complete and endearing musician.

The soundtrack of the film Maestro is published by DG under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin with extracts from works by Bernstein, Mahler, etc., DG 505 611

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