Concerts in Los Angeles, Costa Mesa and Northridge will examine the composer and conductor’s work in the classical realm and Broadway.
It’s never a bad time to be enraptured by the music of Leonard Bernstein.
But 2018, the centenary of his birth, focuses attention on the unique cultural dynamo of the 20th century. Bernstein created hugely popular works that continue to be heard and influence while simultaneously turning the classical world on its ear through his bravado as a previously unprecedented phenomenon, an American conductor.
Embodying high-brow passion, while simultaneously being received as a populist, Bernstein the man also lived a high profile, jet-set lifestyle during the mid 20th century, when classical music figures were seen as remote, Old-World snobby relics.
Equal parts serious artist and flamboyant personality, beloved educator and international humanitarian, Bernstein’s out-sized energy established him as a striking public figure. But his tangible achievements, across a range of musical forms, are what ultimately distinguish him today.
To get a better feel for his unprecedented range and impact consider this six-month stretch in late 1957-early 1958:
While the names of most classical music conductors fade abruptly once they stop waving a baton, and just a few Broadway composers receive mention only when their works are being revived, Bernstein’s legacy remains alive, well and actively a focal point as his 100th birthday arrives this August.
If you doubt that, “Bernstein 100,” an international website for all things Bernstein-ian, includes a performance calendar for 2018. It shows that this past weekend Bernstein was performed in, among other spots, Phoenix, Tokyo and Barcelona. This weekend he’ll be heard in Shanghai, Edmonton and Costa Mesa.
In Costa Mesa, Scott Coulter is directing and appearing in a showcase of Bernstein’s Broadway songs at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts (Thursday-Saturday). Over the past three decades, the New York-based cabaret impresario has worked across the landscape of the American songbook, and in Bernstein Coulter enthusiastically yet thoughtfully finds a musical skill set unlike any other.
“What makes Bernstein unique in the pantheon of Broadway composers is that he came from the classical world,” said Coulter.
“Most of the Broadway composers we love come from jazz or pop music. Bernstein brings a different musical vocabulary; his classical music background infuses complexity yet fluidity in his scores.”
Coulter microscopically appreciates Bernstein’s ballads – “We’ll be doing ‘Maria’ as well as ‘Somewhere,’ and in both, in the just first two notes, the intervals are very rarely found in contemporary popular music” as well as his faster, uptempo numbers, all still instantly recognizable to modern audiences.
“‘West Side Story,’ that still amazes me! 60 years later it sounds unlike anything else on Broadway today, those intricate, varying rhythms. As a listener they demand your attention.”
Carl St. Clair’s attention was also captured by Bernstein. For St. Clair, longtime music director of the Pacific Symphony, his sentiments come in the first person.
“My time with him were moments of absolute joy and things to be treasured,” Carl St. Clair said in a recent interview during which he remembered Bernstein with both reverence and unreserved awe.
St. Clair first encountered his self-described mentor in 1985 at a summer workshop for young conductors that Bernstein held annually at Tanglewood, a summer music festival in western Massachusetts. St. Clair subsequently worked with Bernstein intermittently, but closely, during the last five years of the composer’s life.
In the summer of 1990, St. Clair shared the Tanglewood podium with Bernstein, conducting a new Bernstein composition on a program that also saw Bernstein conduct other pieces. Gravely ill, with the heart disease that would combine with progressive lung disease to kill him within a couple months, it was the last public performance Bernstein gave.
“In all facets of his life, he seemed so vital to me,” said St. Clair. “(He) informed the minutes you came in contact with him with whatever he was involved in.”
St. Clair makes note of Bernstein’s fabled role as teacher, mostly with other conductors.
“He worked from the inside out, not imposing his ways on you, but helping you analyze and understand the music, to be better able to make your own choices from a more knowledgeable place within you.
St. Clair paused and then conveyed what perhaps is Bernstein’s ultimate legacy through time to us now.
“He was, I think, the ultimate giver.”
Southern California Leonard Bernstein concert events during the next month, organized chronologically by date:
‘One Hand One Heart: 100 Years of Bernstein’: This cabaret show, drawing from Bernstein’s major musicals, including “West Side Story,” features Tony-award nominee singers and a university chorus. Hosted and directed by New York cabaret figure Scott Coulter. Thursday, Jan. 18-Saturday, Jan. 20. Samueli Theater, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $89.714-556-2787. scfta.org
‘Candide’: LA Opera music director James Conlon conducts Bernstein’s most popular opera. The cast is headed up by equal parts of big Broadway names – Kelsey Grammar and Christine Ebersole – and top opera singers Jack Swanson and Erin Morley. Saturday, Jan. 27-Sunday, Feb. 10. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. $24-$299.213-972-8001 laopera.org
Bernstein’s ‘Mass’: Gustavo Dudamel conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Master Chorale and Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, as well as a rock band and marching band is this very theatrical piece about a crisis in faith for a priest celebrating mass. Thursday, Feb. 1-Sunday, Feb. 4. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. $72-$225.323-850-2000. laphil.com
‘KEIGWIN + COMPANY celebrates Bernstein’: The six-piece contemporary dance troupe, emphasizing a theatrical sensibility, mixes original choreography by Larry Keigwin set to Bernstein’s suites from “On the Town” and “On the Waterfront” with two world premieres danced to Bernstein’s Piano Trio and Sonata for Clarinet and Piano.
