PROGRAM NOTES
CONLON PRESENTS BERNSTEIN ’ S KADDISH
James Conlon
Bonnie Perkinson
James Conlon
James Conlon , one of today ’ s most versatile and respected conductors , has cultivated a vast symphonic , operatic , and choral repertoire . Since his 1974 debut with the New York Philharmonic , he has conducted virtually every major American and European symphony orchestra . Through worldwide touring , an extensive discography and filmography , numerous writings , television appearances , and guest speaking engagements , Conlon is one of classical music ’ s most recognized figures . Conlon is Music Director of LA Opera and Artistic Advisor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra . He has served as Music Director of the Ravinia Festival and is Music Director Laureate of the Cincinnati May Festival . He is a noted advocate for composers suppressed by the Nazi regime . Among his numerous prizes are four Grammy ® Awards for recordings with LA Opera , a 2002 Légion d ’ Honneur from then-President of the French Republic Jacques Chirac , and a 2018 Commendatore Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana from Sergio Mattarella , President of the Italian Republic .
FROM THE PODIUM by James Conlon
This is a serious program . Classical music sometimes demands a serious ear of listeners , a serious heart , and a serious sensitivity to the complexity of humanity . Classical drama is divided between tragedy and comedy . Brahms ’ Tragic Overture is a perfect piece by an essential composer who only twice wrote short , standalone orchestral movements . It stands as a book end to his Academic Festival , a light hearted overture . He understood the idea of tragedy much as Shakespeare did — not necessarily a melodramatic , but a serious piece that makes you think .
The tragic character , as defined by the ancient Greeks , has to fall from a great height . That was the case for Franz Schreker , who was trained in Brahmsian principles and became a leading exponent of its antithesis , post-Wagnerian opera . But he fell from an extraordinarily successful position to somewhat out of favor in the late 1920s , and the Nazis silenced him because his father was Jewish . Die Gezeichtneten is a hard title to translate , but I render it as “ stigmatized ,” implying people marked for outsider status , which Schreker himself was to become . He is among the figures I have explored through the Recovered Voices project I helped establish to champion music of composers whose lives were disrupted or extinguished , and whose music was banned by the Nazi regime .
Leonard Bernstein ’ s Kaddish Symphony also fulfills a personal mission . During the years when I directed the Paris Opéra I got to know Samuel Pisar , who lived there . He had survived multiple concentration camps , escaped from a death march , and went on to an extraordinary , music-filled life , as an author , international lawyer , and champion of human rights . He befriended Bernstein , who supported Sam ’ s idea to write a new narration to replace the problematic one , which by his own admission , the composer Bernstein had penned for this symphony . Sam Pisar asked me several times to conduct this new version , but I hadn ’ t managed to do it before he died in 2015 . It ’ s been on my mind for years , and now I am making good on my promise , leading Bernstein ’ s challenging and serious symphony with Sam Pisar ’ s text delivered by his wife Judith and his daughter Leah .
Leonard Bernstein
Courtesy of the Leonard Bernstein Office
22 OVERTURE / BSOmusic . org