Carnegie Hall and New York Phil To Honor Bernstein
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In a rare collaboration, Carnegie Hall and the New York Philharmonic will join forces next fall to produce a festival honoring Leonard Bernstein. The festival will include a concert of Bernstein’s music by the Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall; screenings of Bernstein’s filmed performances; a New York City Center “Encores!” production of “On the Town,” and an education project with New York City middle and high school students focused on Bernstein’s 1971 “Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers.”
Next year marks the 90th anniversary of Bernstein’s birth and the 50th anniversary of his appointment as music director of the New York Philharmonic, a position he held for 11 years.
The New York Philharmonic will play at Carnegie Hall on November 14, which will be the 65th anniversary of Bernstein’s début with the orchestra. Then 25 years old and a recently appointed assistant conductor with the Philharmonic, he substituted at the last moment for Bruno Walter, who had fallen ill. The concert, which was broadcast nationally on the radio, made front-page news and established Bernstein as a musical prodigy.
Another prodigy, Gustavo Dudamel, will lead the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert at Carnegie on November 16, which will include Bernstein’s “Halil” and “Jubilee Games.” Michael Feinstein, the New York Pops, and the Bill Charlap Trio will also perform during the festival. Carnegie Hall’s opening night gala, on September 24, will feature Michael Tilson Thomas leading the San Francisco Symphony in a program focusing on Bernstein’s work for ballet, opera, and musical theater.
In August, HarperCollins will publish “Leonard Bernstein: American Original, How a Modern Renaissance Man Transformed Music and the World During his Philharmonic Years, 1943-1976,” co-written by Leonard’s brother, Burton Bernstein, and the New York Philharmonic archivist and historian Barbara Haws.
At a press event at Carnegie Hall on Monday morning, Carnegie Hall’s executive and artistic director, Clive Gillinson, and the New York Philharmonic’s president and executive director, Zarin Mehta, spoke about the outsized role Bernstein played in the lives of both institutions. The New York Philharmonic was based at Carnegie Hall until 1962, when it moved to Avery Fisher Hall, then simply called Philharmonic Hall, at the newly completed Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Bernstein played over 400 performances at Carnegie Hall in his lifetime.
Mr. Gillinson and Mr. Mehta, as well as two musicians who spoke on behalf of the Philharmonic orchestra, and Bernstein’s daughter, Jamie Bernstein, all focused on Bernstein’s role as an educator. With his televised Young People’s Concerts and performances on the weekly television program “Omnibus,” Bernstein brought classical music to life for audiences of all ages across the country.
The mostly unspoken subtext to the discussion was that New York currently lacks such a charismatic spokesman for classical music. The associate principal bass for the Philharmonic orchestra, Jon Deak, recalled watching the “Omnibus” programs as a child. “He would grab the music like it was a supple living thing, not something pasted on the wall of a museum,” Mr. Deak said. He urged the representatives from all the cultural institutions present to invest in arts education in New York City and “reconstruct the awareness of the arts that Lenny stood for.”
Paraphrasing a remark by Hal Prince, Mr. Gillinson said, “The space he left [has] never been filled.”