Michael R Anderson
UW professor Christopher Taylor played a part originally intended for Bernstein himself.
The Madison Symphony Orchestra’s November program is conductor John DeMain’s tribute to Leonard Bernstein in this centennial year of “Lenny’s” birth.
Bernstein meant much to DeMain as a mentor and an inspiration, and at the opening concert at Overture Hall on Nov. 9, our conductor shared personal reminiscences and memories before each work.
The program starts with two items from Bernstein’s pivotal contributions to musical theater. The Overture to Candide is given a big, bold, and speedy rendition, as kind of “symphonic” projection of this sprightly music, one of the composer’s most popular pieces. And the “Three Dance Episodes” from On the Town capture the important choreographic component in that musical that Bernstein developed with Jerome Robbins.
But the most ambitious Bernstein work in the concert is his Symphony No. 2, Age of Anxiety. Inspired by W. H. Auden’s long poem of that title, this is a very complicated affair.
It is a kind of instrumental dramatization of Auden’s poetry. It is a bewildering mix of classical orchestral forms, reflecting a symphony’s traditional four-movement structure. It has an emphatic part for solo piano (originally intended for Bernstein himself). So is it a symphony or a concerto? It is also an updating of the theme-with-variations idiom. Part One consists of 14 evolving variations on an opening figure (rather in the manner of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. There is a strong background in the concert works of Gershwin, which Bernstein adored. Jazz styles are constantly introduced into the writing — no more blatantly than in the penultimate movement.
It is a calculated work, lasting more than a half-hour, and of all Bernstein’s “classical” compositions for concert purposes, it is perhaps his most substantial. Yet, nothing of it sticks in the mind or is designed to haunt one for days afterward. It explicitly raises the question: Once the memories of Bernstein’s fabulous personality fade away, will his “serious” works survive?
At any rate, the performance is brilliant. The orchestra displays all its resources of color and precision. As soloist, UW-Madison faculty pianist Christopher Taylor is predictably dazzling.
Only the concert’s first half offers music by Bernstein. The second, representing Bernstein the conductor, features Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. This was a Bernstein favorite and the last work he conducted, just before his death. DeMain presents a big-orchestra rendition, perhaps reflecting Bernstein’s theatricality as a conductor, notably in the audience-stirring loud and fast finale.
The program will be repeated on Nov. 10 at 7:30 p.m. and Nov. 11 at 2:30 p.m.
