Leonard Bernstein Celebration.* "Bernstein: Composer and Champion," conducted by Kurt Masur * "Literally: Bernstein," conducted by Jonathan Sheffer * "The Unknown Bernstein," conducted by Michael Barrett * All Our Yesterdays and Bernstein Dances, performed by the Hamburg Ballet * Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, in central Manhattan, New York City, between 62d and 66th streets W of Broadway. Lincoln Center is a complex of many buildings, including the Metropolitan Opera, Avery Fisher Hall, the New York State Theater, the Juilliard , New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. , July 7-26 Leonard Bernstein would have been 80 on August 25, and if retrospectives of his career seem a bit premature less than eight years after his death, the reasons for this summer's celebrations of this extraordinary phenomenon on our native cultural scene are easy to understand: We have not yet come to grips with Bernstein or sorted out our responses. He was the most famous and the most visible serious musician of his time in America, yet in his "classical" works his reach exceeded his grasp (but what a reach!), and he is still inescapable. Phaidon Press has just published, in its 20th Century Composers series, a handsomely illustrated and consistently informative monograph, Leonard Bernstein ($19.95), by one of his, former recording producers, Paul Myers. Sony Classical is busy reissuing his old Columbia Masterworks LPs, restoring repertoire not previously available on CD (this is the company's second reissue program since Bernstein's death). The live tributes this summer are bountiful, too. On August 21 and 22 the Hollywood Bowl will twin a Bernstein tribute with the George Gershwin centenary. But Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts has planned the most sweeping Bernstein retrospective of all, the Leonard Bernstein Celebration (part of the Lincoln Center Festival), with events scheduled between July 7 and 26. The New York Philharmonic The New York Philharmonic is the oldest active symphony orchestra in the United States, organized during 1842. Based in New York City, the Philharmonic performs most of its concerts at Avery Fisher Hall and has long been considered one of the best orchestras in the world. , the orchestra he helmed for a decade, will over the course of two concerts revive his Symphony No. 1 (Jeremiah) and Symphony No. 2 (The Age of Anxiety), pairing them with music by composers he advocated throughout his career--Gershwin, Mahler, Charles Ives, and Aaron Copland. The Eos Orchestra will perform a suite from Dybbuk dybbuk In Jewish folklore, a disembodied human spirit that must wander restlessly, burdened by former sins, until it inhabits the body of a living person. Belief in such spirits was common in eastern Europe in the 16th–17th century. , Bernstein's 1974 ballet score for Jerome Robbins (one of the composer's rare flirtations with atonality atonality (ā'tōnăl`ĭtē), in music, systematic avoidance of harmonic or melodic reference to tonal centers (see key). The term is used to designate a method of composition in which the composer has deliberately rejected the ), as well as his Plato-inspired Serenade (the closest he ever came to penning a concerto) and excerpts from the underrated Songfest song·fest n. A casual gathering for group singing. . And for "The Unknown Bernstein," the composer's estate will sanction performances of rare items previously unproduced in public. Although Bernstein was associated with Robbins since their 1944 American Ballet Theatre American Ballet Theatre, one of the foremost international dance companies of the 20th cent. It was founded in 1937 as the Mordkin Ballet and reorganized as the Ballet Theatre in 1940 under the direction of Lucia Chase and Rich Pleasant. collaboration, Fancy Free (the partnership attained its zenith with West Side Story in 1957), other dance makers have been drawn to his music. The American expatriate John Neumeier has felt the spirit, and he will bring his renowned Hamburg Ballet to Lincoln Center with the full-evening Bernstein Dances, which premiered in June at the Hamburg State Opera The Hamburg State Opera (in German: Hamburgische Staatsoper) is one of the leading opera companies in Germany. Opera in Hamburg dates back to 2 January 1678 when the "Opern-Theatrum" was inaugurated with a performance of a biblical Singspiel by Johann Theile. in Germany. The choreographer has drawn his music from several sources--and no less than Giorgio Armani has designed the costumes for it. Bernstein has been hailed, correctly, as the great popularizer pop·u·lar·ize tr.v. pop·u·lar·ized, pop·u·lar·iz·ing, pop·u·lar·iz·es 1. To make popular: A famous dancer popularized the new hairstyle. 2. of serious music; he was certainly the first musician to exploit the possibilities of television as an educational medium. His concert hall compositions trade in the musical and social trends of his time; Bernstein plugged into the zeitgeis with a vengeance. His finest works, to these ears, are Candide, the much worked-over operetta/musical comedy, heard at its bubbly best in the composer-conducted definitive 1989 version with an all-star cast on Deutsche Grammophon; and on the same label the 1977 Songfest, in which Bernstein set texts by American poets on a range of racial and gender issues. The composer stands naked to the world here, and the effect is profoundly touching. Ulrich is the dance and classical-music critic for the San Francisco Examiner The San Francisco Examiner is a U.S. daily newspaper. It has been published continuously in San Francisco, California, since the late 19th Century. History 19th century The beginning of the Examiner is a topic of some controversy. . |
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