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By Marin Alsop
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, on
July 12, is a great introductory
program to Leonard Bernstein
because it runs the emotion-
al gamut. The Overture to
Candide
has to be one of the
most successful overtures
ever written for music theater.
In four minutes he’s able to
capture all of this fantastic
craziness and it makes you feel
just so joyous. And from there
we go explore the depths of the
Serenade (after Plato’s Sym-
posium)
, which sounds really
highbrow, but with Bernstein
telling this story, it’s really just
the story of a fantastic dinner
party. Everyone is sitting
around and they’ve had a few
drinks, and then they decide,
oh, let’s talk about a subject,
let’s talk about love. So each
person in the circle begins to
speak about love, and the deal
is that wherever the speaker
that precedes you leaves off,
you have to pick up, so the sto-
ry evolves. And that’s exactly
what happens in the piece; the
themes are carried through.
Then, for instance, there’s
Aristophanes, who’s had too
much to drink, so he’s hiccup-
ing, and you can hear it in the
music. Eventually it devolves
into this sort of drunken romp
and they end up having a
huge party, and this, to me, is
kind of a perfect microcosm
of Bernstein himself. You can
have this extremely high-level
discourse and end up having
a downright fantastic party
together. And then we go to
Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony,
the “Pathétique”; of course, it
was a flagship piece for Bern-
stein. When he conducted this
piece—when he conducted
anything
—he embodied the
composer. It was always an
intensely emotional journey
because, of course, this is the
last piece Tchaikovsky wrote.
It’s a piece that’s fraught with
conflict. I remember talking
to Bersntein so much about
this compositional technique
called
appoggiatura
, a note that
needs resolution, so there’s this
constant pulling with it—ev-
erything needs resolution, but,
of course, in the end, there is
no resolution.
for Bernstein, in particular
Beethoven’s philosophy, that
he believed in the power of
love and the power of human-
ity, the power that humans
have when they unite with
each other. There Bernstein
was, playing Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony when the
Berlin Wall came down. There
he was, changing the word
joy
to the word
freedom
, and
that took a lot of audacious
courage. It was so Bernstein,
saying, “I know that Beetho-
ven would be here and he
would’ve done this.” He had
that commitment to stand up
and be present when things
were happening. He said our
response to violence will be
to make music more intense-
ly. That is what he did at so
many spark points in the
world. Beethoven’s Ninth and
Bernstein’s
Chichester Psalms
on the July 14 concert felt like
the perfect partnership. We
have this glorious piece that
Bernstein wrote for Chich-
ester Cathedral, for a very
Christian setting, but all the
text is in Hebrew. Not only
that, but there are all these
jazz elements, and he wants to
connect us to the innocence
of when we were young, so he
calls for a boy soprano in the
beautiful second movement.
I think writing a piece like
this, for this setting, was just
quintessential Bernstein.
Transcribed and
abridged
from video
interviews
with
Marin
Alsop by
Ravinia
ADRIENNE WHITE
RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JULY 9 – JULY 22, 2018
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