TO BERNSTEIN WITH LOVE
Winner of Best Female Artist at both 2012 and 2013 Classical BRIT Awards, Benedetti records exclusively for Decca( Universal Music). Her most recent recording of Shostakovich and Glazunov violin concertos has been met with critical acclaim. Her recording Homecoming: A Scottish Fantasy made her the first solo British violinist since the 1990s to enter the Top 20 of the Official U. K. Albums Chart.
Benedetti was appointed as a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire( MBE) in the 2013 New Year Honors, in recognition of her international music career and work with musical charities throughout the United Kingdom.
Benedetti plays the“ Gariel” Stradivarius( 1717), courtesy of Jonathan Moulds.
Nicola Benedetti makes her BSO debut.
About the Concert
SELECTIONS FROM A BERNSTEIN BIRTHDAY BOUQUET
Any year is a welcome time to hear music by Leonard Bernstein, the most charismatic and multi-talented musician America has ever produced. However, 2018 is an especially fortuitous one because it is the 100 th anniversary of Bernstein’ s birth in 1918. And its worldwide celebration will be as prodigious as was Bernstein’ s personality. In fact, it is lasting not one year but two: beginning with his 99 th birthday on August 25, 2017 and continuing until that date in August 2019. The celebration encompasses thousands of concerts and activities in scores of countries, including virtually every nation in North America, Europe, Asia, South America, Australia and New Zealand, as well as South Africa and several others on the African continent.
To begin the BSO’ s Bernstein celebration, Marin Alsop is remembering another Bernstein anniversary: his 70 th birthday in 1988 held at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’ s bucolic Tanglewood Festival in the Massachusetts Berkshires. In 1940, Bernstein had been one of the first students at its Tanglewood
Institute for gifted young musicians, and he subsequently returned there virtually every summer until his death in 1990 to teach the conducting talent of the future. One of his most brilliant pupils was Marin Alsop.
That summer of 1988 there was a fourday mini-festival at Tanglewood featuring both Bernstein’ s music and the man himself on the podium. On the last day, a remarkable tribute, A Bernstein Birthday Bouquet— Eight Variations on a Theme by Leonard Bernstein, was unveiled under the baton of Seiji Ozawa, music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the time. It was the creation of eight famous composers— Luciano Berio, Leon Kirchner, Jacob Druckman, Lukas Foss, John Corigliano, John Williams, Toru Takemitsu and William Schuman— each of them composing a variation on one of Bernstein’ s most unforgettable themes: the song“ New York, New York” from his early Broadway triumph On the Town.
The styles of these variations are as diverse as the composers themselves. Maestra Alsop has chosen her favorite three to open this concert. The first is by the Italian avant-garde composer Luciano Berio( 1925 – 2003); the second by John Corigliano( b. 1938), composer of the Pied Piper Fantasy for flute and The Red Violin Fantasy for violin; and the third by America’ s most illustrious film composer John Williams( b. 1932). And you won’ t have to listen very hard to detect another famous tune besides“ New York, New York.”
Instrumentation: Two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, celesta and strings.
SERENADE
Leonard Bernstein
Born in Lawrence, MA, August 25, 1918; died in New York City, NY, October 14, 1990
The mid-1950s, along with the mid- 1940s, were the richest periods of
Leonard Bernstein’ s compositional career. In 1957, West Side Story followed hard on the heels of Candide( 1956). These two works for Broadway were preceded in 1953 – 54 by one of his finest works for the concert hall: Serenade for Solo Violin, Strings, Harp and Percussion. At its debut in Venice on September 12, 1954, with Isaac Stern as soloist and Bernstein himself conducting the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, it was universally acclaimed by the critics and today is firmly established in the contemporary concerto repertoire.
Serenade was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, founded by Bernstein’ s mentor, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’ s revered music director Serge Koussevitzky. Koussevitzky had recently died in 1951 and was still mourned by Bernstein, who for the rest of his life wore“ Koussy’ s” cuff links at every concert he conducted and kissed them for good luck before going on stage.
However, Serenade was not a memorial to Koussevitzky; rather, Bernstein tells us, it was inspired by“ a re-reading of Plato’ s charming dialogue, The Symposium.” One of Plato’ s shorter and lighter dialogues, The Symposium takes place at a well-lubricated dinner party at the poet-dramatist Agathon’ s house, during which Socrates, Aristophanes and the other guests praise the god Eros and discourse on love in all its aspects. Bernstein wrote that“ there is no literal program” for the work, but by following the basic tone of each speaker, ranging from humorous to elegiac, he created a five-movement work of marvelous variety and momentum. He wrote gorgeously for an unusual ensemble, consisting of string orchestra augmented by harp and a variety of percussion instruments, and equally skillfully for the violin soloist, whose virtuosity never overwhelms expressiveness.
Bernstein provided the following brief guideline to Serenade:
“ I. Phaedrus; Pausanias( Lento; Allegro). Phaedrus opens the symposium with a lyrical oration in praise of Eros, the god of love.( Fugato, begun by
12 OVERTURE / BSOmusic. org