Saturday, The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus presented Bernstein's Chichester Psalms with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. All season, the ASO has paired works by L.B. & L.B., i.e., 2018's centennial composer Leonard Bernstein with Ludwig van Beethoven, whose works Bernstein memorably conducted so often. While Bernstein could be self - consciously portentous in his compositions, and Beethoven set the standard for Romantic struggles, these pieces work through their dark moments to reach heights of contentment, gratitude, and exuberant joy.
I've loved both pieces for nearly fifty years, so it was fun to notice a symmetry in their presentation.
At 20 minutes, Bernstein's work is a vocal piece with a few orchestral interludes; at 60 minutes, Beethoven's work is an orchestral piece capped off with a choral fantasia. Bernstein's texts are psalms, in Hebrew, praising God and extolling "how good and pleasant it is when God's people dwell together in unity"; Beethoven's text is from Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy," another expression of unity.
Both composers work with identical motifs, a descending fourth followed by a descending fifth -- with the difference that Bernstein starts his descending fifth up a minor seventh. Both composers announce those intervals at a stately pace right away, then bandy them about in different registers at different speeds. In the last movements of both pieces, these intervals return to bring the listener's journey full - circle.
Both composers were re-working some older material. Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" is a better draft of the "Choral Fantasia." The violent theme ("Why do the nations rage?") that interrupts Psalm 23 in the second movement of Chichester Psalms is lifted from Bernstein's early draft of the Jets' opening number in West Side Story, reports lyricist Stephen Sondheim in his 2010 memoir.
The vocalists acted their pieces as roles. Countertenor Daniel Moody [see photo] seemed blissful as he sang (in Hebrew) "The Lord is my Shepherd," his voice filling the auditorium before diminishing to sustained soft ends of phrases; he seemed regretful while those raging nations trampled all over his lovely melody. In the Beethoven, soprano Jessica Rivera, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Lauricella sang earnestly; tenor Thomas Cooley and bass Andrea Mastroni, singing of brotherhood, were jolly.
Because I've heard recordings of both pieces many times, I picked up on a few passages of the Bernstein when guest conductor Thomas Søndergård had trouble keeping chorus and orchestra together, but, hey, it's live music, and the meter was 7/4 and 10/8. Perfection on a recording is nice, but palpable risk is part of the live experience, and the sound in a concert hall is so much better.
In the end, the audience was genuinely pleased and we left with another L. B. -- a little bounce to our steps.
Lenny's daugher Jamie wrote her memoir Famous Father Girl about her life with Lenny, but even at a distance, she and I shared some of the same experiences of him. See "Lentennial: Bernstein at 100, Profane and Sacred" (11/22/2018).
Lenny's second symphony "Age of Anxiety" is central to an article I wrote about the ASO's season premiere a couple years ago, "Homecoming with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra" (09/24/2017)
The ASO community includes musicians, composers, and audience. I wrote about "Bringing New Composers into the Family" when I reviewed a program that included Bernstein's West Side Story suite. (04/09/2013)
No comments:
Post a Comment