Happy Birthday, Lenny!
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
What American conductor/pianist/composer/pedagogue was born this day in 1918? Hint: the most famous and successful native-born figure in the history of classical music in the USA.
You guessed it. Leonard Bernstein is this evening’s birthday honoree, and honor him we will, with lots of his own self-conducted compositions: several selections from “West Side Story,” the complete “Fancy Free” ballet, “Dream with Me”—a song from his incidental music to a production of “Peter Pan,” and the Symphony No. l 2 (“The Age of Anxiety”). We’ll hear him conduct the New York Philharmonic in Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, after a sample of Bernstein the pedagogue discussing “How a Great Symphony Was Written,” along with musical examples to illustrate the points he makes.
Breaking up the Bernstein will be: Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 1, Sir Christopher Hogwood leading the Academy of Ancient Music; a flute and harp version of Mozart’s Violin Sonata in D; and John Adams “Fearful Symmetries.” No, Adams was not intending this piece to have any connection to William Blake’s “The Tyger,” from which he borrowed the phrase; it was just that he liked the two words’ “combination of passion and precision.”
And we have to light candles for a second birthday cake honoring Elvis Costello, who is 50 years old today. While munching, we’ll listen to selections from “Il sogno,” Costello’s take on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
You guessed it. Leonard Bernstein is this evening’s birthday honoree, and honor him we will, with lots of his own self-conducted compositions: several selections from “West Side Story,” the complete “Fancy Free” ballet, “Dream with Me”—a song from his incidental music to a production of “Peter Pan,” and the Symphony No. l 2 (“The Age of Anxiety”). We’ll hear him conduct the New York Philharmonic in Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, after a sample of Bernstein the pedagogue discussing “How a Great Symphony Was Written,” along with musical examples to illustrate the points he makes.
Breaking up the Bernstein will be: Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 1, Sir Christopher Hogwood leading the Academy of Ancient Music; a flute and harp version of Mozart’s Violin Sonata in D; and John Adams “Fearful Symmetries.” No, Adams was not intending this piece to have any connection to William Blake’s “The Tyger,” from which he borrowed the phrase; it was just that he liked the two words’ “combination of passion and precision.”
And we have to light candles for a second birthday cake honoring Elvis Costello, who is 50 years old today. While munching, we’ll listen to selections from “Il sogno,” Costello’s take on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
