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A Tribute to Lenny (Leonard Bernstein)
These clips show the incredible talent, passion and versatility of Leonard Bernstein, the quintessential American musical artist; composer, conductor and all-round life-loving guy. Mostly loved, sometimes hated and sometimes insecure about his immense talent, he earned fame conducting symphonies and composing for Broadway, but never achieved a place in the standard concert hall repertoire in the “classical†realm as he so wished (except as a “pops’ composer and for short “serious†works like the lighthearted Candide overture). He was a bisexual, and it is said he went to women for emotional needs and men for sexual ones. That is probably an oversimplification. I saw the man conduct only once, in early 1984, but it was a memorable evening in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, not necessarily for what Lenny did right but for what he did wrong. After conducting the touring Vienna Philharmonic in the vigorous finale of Brahms’ second symphony, Lenny stepped down to the left off the podium, but missed the first step and fell flat on his face, partly displacing the concertmaster’s stand in the process and dropping his baton. He bruised his chest from a gold medallion he wore, but had hurt nothing else but his immense ego. He picked himself up, angrily grabbed his baton from the concertmaster and stalked off. The most remarkable thing about all of this, to me, was the gasp and total silence that came from the applauding audience. I mean the immense communal gasp, and the stopping on a dime of the applause, could not have been more precisely timed by Lenny himself. It was one of the most remarkable things I have ever heard. After all, everyone in the audience suddenly thought we had witnessed Lenny’s death by possible heart attack. It would not have been unexpected. After all the man lived hard, smoke and drank and whored with gusto. Still, when he died in 1990, it was all too soon. The three clips featured here come from an especially lively and inspired 1970s performance of Bernstein conducting and playing the piano with a French orchestra in the spiky, jaunty, modernistic Piano Concerto in g, by Maurice Ravel. Each clip covers each of the work’s three movements. Note not only the crispness of his attack in the opening and closing movements, but the incredible sensitivity in his control of tempo and dynamics in the slow romantic middle movement---something to truly savor. The French, recognizing a masterly performance of their own music when they hear it, erupt in an incredible roar at the end of this. It is a thrilling performance and a tour-de-force for Lenny, demonstrating his ability to lead from the piano while keyboarding a difficult work.