Bernstein's Birthday Kickoff
The year 2008 marks the 90th birthday of the larger than life Leonard Bernstein, and there will be many celebrations throughout this season and next. The first major one took place on Tuesday evening at Carnegie Hall as the Philadelphia Orchestra tackled his initial effort in symphonic form.
Leading the band was Christoph Eschenbach, soon to be on the outside looking in. Bernstein himself was no stranger to rough-and-tumble orchestral politics, pushing hard to oust former New York Philharmonic music director Dmitri Mitropoulos and successfully appropriating his podium. Mr. Eschenbach was ousted from the Philadelphia Orchestra by a combination of overblown performances, critical scrutiny, and the dissatisfaction of his players. The orchestra has hired the reliable Charles Dutoit as an interim conductor for a purposely open-ended duration.
Bernstein's Symphony No. 1, written in 1942, is subtitled "Jeremiah," and is filled with the music of the liturgy. The opening movement, Prophecy, begins with the French horns intoning the Shalosh Regalim (amen response from the Sabbath service). The second movement, Profanation, paraphrases the cantillation motives of the Haftorah chant. The third movement, Lamentation, includes fragments of the Ekah (the book of Lamentations), which is chanted on the ninth day of the Hebrew month Ab in commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem. As the composer said, "other resemblances to Hebrew liturgical music are a matter of emotional quality."
Mr. Eschenbach led a studious, if a bit careful, performance of this music. He certainly understands the wide scope of the first movement, which often sounds more like Elmer Bernstein than Leonard. Maestro inherited that fabulous Philadelphia string sound and, at the very least, did not tinker too much with it. Some of the voice-in-the-wilderness quality was sacrificed for precision and clarity, but overall this was fine music-making.
The solo trumpet came a cropper in Profanation, but the bulk of the movement was impressive, a Charybdis of cross rhythms and complex changes. Though the work can be very challenging for a large ensemble, this fine group came through unscathed.
The third movement contains a vocal part for mezzo-soprano harking back to Bernstein's earlier Lamentation for Soprano and Orchestra. The pronunciation of the Hebrew is the Ashkenazic type used in Eastern Europe in order to pay homage to the symphony's dedicatee, Bernstein's father Samuel (ironically trashed mercilessly in the composer's opera "Trouble in Tahiti" — Lenny had big-time Oedipal issues).
The soloist was the Israeli Rinat Shaham, who proved to be the artist of the evening. A strong voice combined with excellent pitch produced a series of nicely rounded tones. Her Hebrew diction was, of course, flawless. Like Cassandra at the battlements, she stared out into the void with various shades of horror and depth of feeling that would have put over the character even for the hearing impaired. Once or twice, Mr. Eschenbach covered her with a blaring instrumental tutti, but mostly she was easily heard in the back of the balcony. Although the first note and the last of Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet" Fantasy-Overture were not together, what happened in between was mostly quite satisfying. Mr. Eschenbach trod gingerly in the middle of that line that separates sentiment from sentimentality, keeping the shampoo commercial theme — you all know it — from bubbling over. In fact, for a conductor with a habit of emotional excess, he was quite restrained in this performance. Tchaikovsky's First Symphony rounded out the evening.
