Bruno Walter, who was to have conducted this afternoon, is ill, and his place will
be taken by the young American-born Assistant Conductor of the Philharmonic Symphony,
Leonard Bernstein.
On November 14th, 1943, there emerged in the
firmament a new star. That star turned into a comet, and that comet turned into
a meteor which landed on the podium of Carnegie Hall on that very day.
That meteor had a name, Leonard Bernstein.
My dad was 25, and the phone rang, and it was
Bruno Zirato, the manager of the New York Philharmonic, informing my dad
that he was going to have to conduct the matinee concert that very day because
Bruno Walter was sick, and he was going to have to step in. The thing that never
happens for assistant conductors was going to happen to my dad that day.
The young Bernstein mounted the podium at Carnegie Hall, stood in front of the
New York Philharmonic, and led a performance that catapulted him to the front page of The
New York Times.
It's Joshua Bell here, and I'm just so excited to be coming to the
Bernstein festival here with the New York Philharmonic, at the opening concert,
playing what I think is one of Bernstein's greatest pieces, the
Serenade for Violin and Orchestra. I performed it with Alan [Gilbert]; it's a piece that we just
have so much fun doing. So it'll be a highlight of my season, and I
can't wait to see you all there.
The first symphony is instrumental until
the last movement, and the last movement uses a text from the Old Testament.
It's from the Book of Lamentations, and it is a kind of keening, grieving sound that
this singing has in the last movement, and it's just a real
breast-beating sensibility.
Symphony No. 2, "The Age of Anxiety," is also about being upset with the world.
The text that inspired Symphony No. 2, "The Age of Anxiety," was
by W. H. Auden, which is all about the state of the world and what are
we going to do about it, which is a sensibility that we still have all these years later.
So that symphony may really resonate with audiences today.
We've chosen two works that have important relevance to Bernstein.
The first one is indeed one of the
pieces that he led as a substitute for Bruno Walter, Richard Strauss's elegant
tone poem "Don Quixote," played by the orchestra's Principal cellist Carter Brey,
representing the hero and Sancho Panza portrayed by Cynthia Phelps, violist.
The second, I will lead his final symphony written in 1963, which is called "Kaddish."
The "Kaddish" title of the symphony came after President Kennedy
was assassinated, and he had actually already decided to use the text of the
Kaddish prayer — the Hebrew text. The prayer is used at a funeral when someone
has died so at that point he decided to dedicate his symphony to the slain
President and it became the "Kaddish" Symphony, dedicated to JFK.
So many of us were transfixed and glued to our television sets when
Leonard Bernstein would come out and explain what music was all about.
What exactly is Viennese music?
Well, it's a number of things, but I'm sure that the first
thought that springs into your minds is the waltz.
Through clever demonstrations,
through musical excerpts, through soaring personality, wonderful texts, young people
across this country learned from the master.
He loved conducting the Philharmonic. They were his gang, you know, his
extended family, and we certainly felt that way as his kids. We felt like we had
sort of a hundred and six siblings. His reaction to being celebrated this
way by the Philharmonic would not be "Who, me?" He was no shrinking violet when it
came to getting attention, especially for his own music; he would have loved that.
He would have been thrilled to see all three of his symphonies getting all this
attention from his extended family.
The inspiration he left for all of us not
only holds us through this hundredth anniversary of his birth but for all
time we have left here on earth as musicians. In '43 the star was born.
The comet swished across the sky. The meteor landed, and what it left us was
the most important piece of musical history that classical music could ever
have in the United States. That was Leonard Bernstein.