{"id":47970,"date":"2017-10-01T11:18:18","date_gmt":"2017-10-01T15:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=47970"},"modified":"2017-10-01T11:18:18","modified_gmt":"2017-10-01T15:18:18","slug":"record-keeping-the-floodgates-open-for-100th-anniversary-of-the-birth-of-leonard-bernstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2017\/10\/01\/record-keeping-the-floodgates-open-for-100th-anniversary-of-the-birth-of-leonard-bernstein\/","title":{"rendered":"RECORD KEEPING | Naxos Opens The Floodgates For 100th Anniversary Of The Birth Of Leonard Bernstein"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Naxos
Naxos drops a new Leonard Bernstein release with Baltimore Symphony, Marin Alsop, Jennifer Johnson Cano, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. (Photo: Allan Warren)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Before long, the floodgates will open on celebrations of the 100th<\/sup> anniversary of the birth of Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), one of the greatest composers and conductors in the history of American music. Orchestras everywhere are programming his music in 2018 and his Broadway shows will surely enjoy revivals all over the country. The record companies have already started too; over the past few years, Naxos has been recording all Bernstein\u2019s major works and many of the minor ones too, in performances conducted by one of his outstanding prot\u00e9g\u00e9es, Marin Alsop, music director of both the Baltimore Symphony and the S\u00e3o Paulo Symphony Orchestra in Brazil. This latest instalment is every bit as good as its predecessors. Alsop has a great affinity for Bernstein\u2019s style, and the Baltimore Symphony plays splendidly.<\/p>\n

Bernstein composed three symphonies over the course of his career – none of them in any way traditional. Symphony No. 1 has a mezzo-soprano soloist in the last movement, Symphony No. 2 is virtually a piano concerto, and Symphony No. 3 has a narrator, a soprano soloist and a chorus. Each is concerned to a greater or lesser extent with what Bernstein called \u201cthe struggle that is born of the crisis of our century, a crisis of faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Bernstein was raised in the Jewish faith and remained a passionate adherent of Judaism all his life, he struggled to reconcile the evil and injustice he saw all around him with belief in God. This struggle, which is fully depicted in his Symphony No. 3, \u201cKaddish,\u201d also appears in his earlier symphonies. The final movement of his Symphony No. 1 is a setting of a text from The Lamentations of Jeremiah,<\/em> in which the prophet Jeremiah seeks to come to terms with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and his Symphony No. 2 was inspired by W.H. Auden\u2019s poem, The Age of Anxiety<\/em> (1947), which deals with man\u2019s search for identity in a post-war world. The symphony loosely follows the structure of Auden\u2019s poem in purely musical terms – no words, only notes. It is one of Bernstein\u2019s finest pieces, from the brooding melancholy of the clarinets in the opening bars to the exhilarating and jazzy Masque movement, to its powerfully affirmative ending.<\/p>\n

\"Bernstein:
Bernstein: Symphony No. 1 \u201cJeremiah\u201d* & Symphony No. 2 \u201cThe Age of Anxiety\u201d**. Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano*. Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano**. Baltimore Symphony\/Marin Alsop. Naxos 8.559790. Total Time: 59:32.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Alsop\u2019s rendition of the \u201cJeremiah\u201d Symphony, Jennifer Johnson Cano literally brings a fresh and appealing voice to both the Biblical text and the music. In Symphony No. 2, Jean-Yves Thibaudet offers a softer and more lyrical touch at the keyboard than authoritative predecessors such as Lukas Foss and Philippe Entremont. Then there is the recording quality. Tim Handley is the producer, engineer and editor for all of Alsop\u2019s recordings of the Bernstein symphonies and illuminates textures with consummate skill. The percussion parts are remarkably well rendered, without overwhelming the rest of the orchestra.<\/p>\n

Bernstein himself made excellent recordings of his symphonies \u2014 first with the New York Philharmonic for Columbia Records and then with the Israel Philharmonic for DG \u2014 and one might well ask how recordings by other conductors could even come close. After all, Bernstein was not only a gifted composer, but one of the leading conductors of his time.<\/p>\n

That said, one could ask the same question about other composer-conductors \u2014 Stravinsky and Britten come readily to mind \u2014 who have left an authoritative recorded legacy. The answer is that great musical masterpieces seldom reveal all their secrets in a single performance, even when the composers themselves are at the helm.<\/p>\n

For more about Leonard Bernstein\u2019s 100th<\/sup> birthday visit the website www.leonardbernstein.com<\/a> which also offers a full list of his compositions, a discography, a videography and many other resources for both scholars and music-lovers.<\/p>\n

#LUDWIGVAN<\/i>
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Naxos drops a new Leonard Bernstein release with Baltimore Symphony, Marin Alsop, Jennifer Johnson Cano, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":47972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6439,77,36,5739,51,52],"tags":[6017,4623,11419,1939,2102],"yst_prominent_words":[11406,9101,11405,9102,9123,8856,9099,11409,11417,9122,9121,9119,11410,9120,9118,11416,6616,6636,6637,11418],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/10\/Leonard_Bernstein_2_Allan_Warren.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-ctI","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47973,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47970\/revisions\/47973"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47970"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=47970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}