This 60-minute program honors the great American conductor, pianist and composer Leonard Bernstein as a teacher. It assesses his importance, his credo and his sense of obligation to pass on to following generations what he himself learned and experienced. Leonard Bernstein saw himself as a link in a long chain of musical tradition leading from Koussevitzky, Mitropoulos, Reiner and Copland to himself and on to a younger generation represented by Seiji Ozawa and Michael Tilson Thomas, and to the youngest musicians he particularly enjoyed teaching, those who were still dreaming of a career. The film shows Leonard Bernstein as the great “roaming rabbi” of music and love, two concepts which were synonyms for him, just like learning and teaching. We see the great musician who offered his knowledge without reservation and was still developing himself in his last years, eager to learn from other artists. The film also shows Bernstein during rehearsals with orchestras, with famous soloists (e.g. Krystian Zimerman), in conversation with friends and pupils and at work in Vienna, New York, Tanglewood and Salzau.
Bruckner, Symphony No.9 in D minor
When Leonard Bernstein died in 1990 at the age of 72, music lovers the world over mourned the loss of one of the 20th century’s artistic giants. In addition to his role as conductor, composer, educator and performing artist, Bernstein was one of the early pioneers in bringing the arts to television. As such, he became one of the most internationally recognized musical personalities in the world. He was a man who not only needed music in order to live, but who saw in artistic communication the means to touch the mind, the heart and the spirit all at once. His need to generate this communication dictated his life from the day he discovered music to the day he died. Recorded in March 1990, this performance is Leonard Bernstein’s last concert with the Vienna Philharmonic, an orchestra he deeply loved.
Liszt, A Faust Symphony
Liszt had discovered Goethe’s Faust in a French translation just before the premiere of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, and it was Berlioz who drew his attention to it. Though he initially contemplated writing an opera on this topic, he ultimately decided on a symphonic work which he called “A Faust Symphony in Three Character Pictures” which evoke Faust, Marguerite and Mephistopheles. His goal was to create psychological portraits that capture the character from within and, through recurring motifs and melodies, show that the three figures are interconnected. The work was premiered in Weimar on 5 September 1857 under the direction of the composer. In this performance, Leonard Bernstein conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra and tenor Kenneth Riegel at Boston’s Symphony Hall.
Die Schöpfung (The Creation) Hob.XXI:2
Haydn began writing the oratorio “Die Schöpfung” (The Creation) in 1795; it was given its first performance at the palace of Prince Schwarzenberg in Vienna in 1798. Haydn’s life’s work reached its climax and its conclusion in The Creation and in the oratorio The Seasons, written in 1801. Shortly before his death in 1808, Haydn attended another gala performance of The Creation which was received by the audience with wild enthusiasm. Leonard Bernstein’s recording of this work was made at the Benedictine Abbey of Ottobeuren in 1986 with the chorus and Symphony Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio with soloists Judith Blegen, Thomas Moser, Kurt Moll, Lucia Popp and Kurt Ollmann. Bernstein himself said of The Creation: “In the beginning of this awesome musical version, Haydn created one of the supreme music dramatizations of all time: the depiction of chaos, as he entitled it – that pre-terrestrial chaos depicted in Genesis by the single line: ‘And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the Deep’. This musical depiction is of a beauty almost frightening in its chromatic and dissonant texture – something outside of Time, and certainly outside of the 1790s, when it was written. … Haydn’s The Creation gives us time to remember – and rejoice in – the purity and grace and fortitude of Nature, to saunter blissfully through that Garden of Gardens along with Adam and Eve; to restore our souls, to recover our moral strength, and to rediscover our power to praise.”
Monteverdi, Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers of the Blessed Virgin)
Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) contributed more to the music of his time than any other composer: he perfected the art of the madrigal, gave decisive impulses to the young genre of the opera by his imaginative use of descriptive and dramatic effects and by giving each figure an individual character, and introduced the expressive language of secular music into the rigid sacred music of his time. In his “Marian Vespers,” composed in Mantua in 1610, Monteverdi combined elements from the traditional church music style with the new “stile concertato” and polychoral forms, but also boldly made use of Gregorian chant. Whether for solo voice and continuo, for chorus a cappella or for the mighty forces of the chorus and orchestra – Monteverdi cast each single piece in the Marian Vespers in its own mould, thereby obtaining an expressive diversity within a stylistically unified framework. Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Concentus musicus are the ideal interpreters of Monteverdi’s music. Their year-long specialization in the field of early music and original performance practice guarantees an authoritative and gripping interpretation. The concert was recorded at the Baroque Cathedral of Graz, Austria, in 1986.
Mahler, Symphony No.8 in E flat major “Symphony of a Thousand”
Leonard Bernstein conducted the work at the Salzburg Festival in 1975 and shortly thereafter in Vienna’s Konzerthaus, where it was recorded. The stage of the Konzerthaus was enlarged to make room for the unusually large orchestra, the two choruses, the children’s choir and the soloists. Bernstein was the first conductor ever to record all of Mahler’s symphonies not only on disk, but also on video. The Mahler cycle was the first project in the more than 20-year-long association between Leonard Bernstein and Unitel. The leading Mahler interpreter of our time, Bernstein recorded all of Mahler’s symphonies between 1971 and 1985, chiefly with the Vienna Philharmonic, producing a unique musical document and triggering a major reappreciation of Mahler’s works. “All Mahler symphonies, all Mahler works for that matter, deal in extremes, extremes of dynamic, of tempo, of emotional meaning. When it is bare, it’s extremely bare, when it is thick and rich, it’s thicker and richer than anything in ‘Götterdämmerung’, and when it is suffering it suffers to a point that no music has ever suffered before.” (Leonard Bernstein)
The Love of Three Orchestra
Leonard Bernstein’s relationships with the orchestras he conducted were always intense. At their best, he felt that they were somewhere between a love affair and a family in which he played the role of the father. In more than 40 years on the podium, he enjoyed this special kind of relationship with a number of orchestras in the Old World and the New. “The Love of Three Orchestras” is an account of that experience, but concentrates on the three great orchestral families closest to his heart: the New York Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras. Bernstein begins by looking back to that moment in 1943 when he made his triumphant debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 25. Among the landmarks he recalls are the Young People’s Concerts and his twelve years as musical director. Bernstein’s association with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra began in 1947. His reminiscences include stories of performances during the early battle-torn days of the foundation of the State of Israel. Bernstein’s relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic began in 1966. He tells how the relationship got off to a disastrous start and recounts some of the difficulties he found in playing the music of Gustav Mahler with them. The music sequences and examples which illustrate Bernstein’s reminiscences are taken from Unitel films and videotapes directed by Humphrey Burton.
The Little Drummerboy – A TV-Essay on Gustav Mahler by and with Leonard Bernstein including excerpts from Mahler’s symphonies and song cycles
In this musical essay, Leonard Bernstein recollects and relives his experiences with the music of the great Viennese composer and conductor Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). Bernstein filmed all of Mahler’s ten symphonies for Unitel as well as Das Lied von der Erde and the Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The vocal soloists of these productions, Dame Janet Baker, Christa Ludwig, Edith Mathis, Lucia Popp and Walton Groenroos, underscore Leonard Bernstein’s elucidations with appropriate music examples. The recordings with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra were made in Tel Aviv, those with the London Symphony Orchestra in the Cathedral of Ely and those with the Wiener Philharmoniker in the Grosser Musikvereinssaal in Vienna, in which Gustav Mahler himself conducted. The Little Drummer Boy illustrates the fundamental concepts of Leonard Bernstein’s interpretation of Mahler’s works, and exposes not only the building material and framework of Mahler’s brilliant structures, but also the tensional pulls within them. Searching for the musical roots and the hidden truths guiding the composer, Leonard Bernstein discovers the key to Mahler’s music in the composer’s repressed Jewishness. Starting from the song Der Tambourg’sell (From Des Knaben Wunderhorn, written in 1899), Leonard Bernstein spans a broad arch over all the symphonies and concludes with Mahler’s last and greatest song, the Lied von der Erde (1910).
Bach, Johannespassion (St. John’s Passion) BWV 245
Johann Sebastian Bach composed the St. John Passion in Cöthen during the winter of 1722/23. The text is drawn from chapters 18 and 19 of the Gospel according to St. John, and includes some excerpts from St. Mathew and additional text from a Passion poem by the Hamburg town councillor Barthold Heinrich Brockes. The composer led the first performance at the Good Friday services on 7 April 1724 at St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig, where he had since become municipal music director and cantor of the Thomasschule. This Passion is heard less often today than the St. Matthew Passion, perhaps because the St. John Passion is in some ways more raw and evokes the anguish of the Passion more painfully than the St. Matthew work. A musician’s musician, an occasional firebrand and a constant paradox – Nikolaus Harnoncourt (born in 1929) is one of the most profound and intriguing conductors of our time. Considered one of the world’s leading specialists of Baroque music, he has long since turned his attention to Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and even to Jacques Offenbach and Johann Strauss. He spent many years as a cellist with the Wiener Symphoniker before founding the “Concentus Musicus Wien” with his wife Alice in 1953. It soon became one of the world’s most respected ensembles specializing in the performance of early music on original instruments. In the 1970s, Harnoncourt joined forces with Jean-Pierre Ponnelle to stage a series of Monteverdi operas at the Zurich Opera House. This universally acclaimed cycle contributed to a renaissance of Monteverdi’s music and set standards for early Baroque performance practice. He later began to turn his attention more and more to the music of Mozart, whom he considers “the most romantic of all composers”. Harnoncourt did not make his official debut at the Salzburg Festival until 1992. He has been conducting there regularly since then and is a sought-after guest conductor of such reputable ensembles as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
Haydn, Missa in tempore belli (English introduction included)
The title of the work “Missa in tempore belli” (Mass in Time of War) recalls the war conducted by the Austrian Emperor Franz against France, whose young general Bonaparte was then rushing from one victory to the next. In August 1796 Vienna had to mobilize its troops. The subtitle “Paukenmesse” or Kettledrum Mass, comes from the prominent timpani and brass instruments in the last section of the Mass. The dramatic military sounds are made all the more striking as Haydn transforms the music into a fervent prayer for peace. Leonard Bernstein led this performance of the Mass at the Basilica of Ottobeuren on 30 September 1984 with the Chorus and Symphony Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio. The soloists were Judith Blegen (soprano), Brigitte Fassbaender (alto), Claes H. Ahnsjö (tenor) and Hans Sotin (bass). Bernstein said: “How does it feel to conduct a Haydn mass in this extraordinary, deeply impressive setting of the Ottobeuren Basilica? It feels perfect. If I had to imagine this mass visually and translate it into architectural terms, from one art to another, or in decorative terms – this is what I would imagine. It is the Haydn Mass.”