I requested this disc
primarily because the suite from On
the Waterfront is one of my favorite
Bernstein compositions (a sort of Pines
of Manhattan). I’m always eager
to hear a new interpretation. But I
was also exceedingly curious to hear
how the venerable, but notoriously uneven,
Lamoureux Orchestra would tackle this
quintessentially American music.
My impression, which
may well be erroneous, given the scant
American distribution of many European
labels, is that the Lamoureux hasn’t
made a lot of records lately. Back when
I started serious collecting (c. 1956),
that orchestra was all over the place
– chiefly as the workhorse outfit for
Epic Records. If you wanted to acquire
certain compositions, you either bought
the Lamoureux version or you did without.
Inevitably, therefore, I soon had 20-25
of their recordings and while I knew
they didn’t sound as good as the New
York Philharmonic, I was content just
to have passable versions of the repertoire.
I know there are still
collectors who find – or profess to
find – a certain nostalgic magic in
those old grooves. They truly believe
there’s a special cachet attached to
French music performed during the era
when French orchestras dependably sounded
like French orchestras. And it is true
that, under conductors such as Martinon,
Munch, Fournet, Jean Morel and Paul
van Kempen, the Lamoureux did make some
fine recordings. But for my taste, the
orchestra too often straddled the line
between "idiomatic" and "slovenly".
The last straw for
me, the release that caused me to stop
taking that orchestra seriously, was
the world premier recording of Lili
Boulanger’s music, issued by Everest
in 1959. Talk about a Road-to-Damascus
listening experience! Music of shattering
power, conducted by Igor Markevitch
with messianic fervor, vivid 35 mm film
sonics from Everest … it had everything
going for it. Except the orchestra.
The Lamoureux boys just couldn’t hack
it; half the time, they sounded like
a parody of the "French Orchestral
Sound": pinched, nasty-sounding
woodwinds, scrawny thin-bodied strings
played with an inexcusable comme-ci,
comme-ca lack of involvement, and
worst of all, that infamous horn section,
with its watery, saxophoney quaver.
Here was a landmark recording, of little
known but magnificent French music –
the unveiling, as it were, of a hitherto
obscure national treasure - and not
even a fire-breathing maestro like Markevitch
could cajole or brow-beat the ensemble
into playing like half its personnel
gave a damn.
Oddly enough, the man
most responsible for improving the standards
of French orchestral performance was
Charles de Gaulle, a gentleman not usually
thought of as a devotee of classical
music. Evidently, de Gaulle got fed
up with reading reviews that made sniffy,
condescending comparisons between the
orchestras of Paris and those of Berlin,
Vienna and Amsterdam. Was Paris, of
all cities, incapable of fielding a
symphony orchestra of the first rank?
Sacré bleu! It was a matter
of national pride that France should
develop crack ensembles worthy of comparison
to those of any other city in Europe
... or, in de Gaulle’s case, the entire
known universe. Funding was found; bad
habits expunged; tough disciplinarians
bestrode the podiums; newer and better
instruments purchased. The transformation
didn’t happen quickly, and not every
subsequent government attached the same
importance to the project as de Gaulle
had done, but the investment eventually
paid off. Contemporary French orchestras
play to the highest international standards,
while still retaining – in some areas
of the repertoire – a special tint and
piquancy.
To make the point,
then: this is the first recording by
the Lamoureux Orchestra I’ve heard in
at least a decade, and on this sumptuously
engineered disc, it produces a full,
rich, well-balanced sonority; a nearly
ideal blend of discipline and expressiveness.
More interestingly, the orchestra seems
perfectly at ease with the Bernstein
style. No, they don’t quite replicate
the jazzy verve of the New Yorkers under
Lenny, but then who could? That quality
was a factor of Lenny’s charisma more
than anything else. Love him or loathe
him, we shall not look upon his like
again, and any younger maestro who tries
to mimic his podium mannerisms will
soon be hooted off the stage.
Bernstein’s own interpretations
are, of course, sui generis,
and irreplaceable; but that doesn’t
mean other conductors can’t perform
his music with equal validity on the
basis of their personalities and insights.
Hearty bravos, then, to Maestro Yutaka
Sado, who clearly loves this music and
conducts it with terrific gusto. I wish
I could tell you something about him,
but the program notes contain no information
whatever. It’s safe to assume he’s Japanese,
but beyond that his career is totally
conjectural. On the basis of what I
hear on this CD, however, he probably
won’t remain obscure for very long –
these are gutsy, lavish, heartfelt interpretations.
Shame on the producers for ignoring
him in the album notes!
Be that as it may,
there’s a unifying theme to the program:
"Music for Theatre and Film".
Some consumers will not realize that
Lenny only wrote one film score.–
that information is buried deep in the
notes, and anyone who goes into a record
store asking for "the other Bernstein
soundtracks" will be met with a
blank stare if not a condescending snigger.
But, oh!, the Broadway scores! They’re
something special, infused with an élan
and a naturalness more exciting, more
coherent, and much more sustained than
Bernstein was able to muster in his
"serious" concert works, which
are wildly uneven. The "Jeremiah"
Symphony is a masterpiece of American
Romanticism ... the Mass is as
dated and embarrassing as that pair
of acid-rock bell-bottoms I keep in
my bedroom closet ... God knows I’ll
never be able to button those
around my middle again, but I can’t
bear to throw them out. So in a very
real sense, this album gives us the
best of the best of Lenny: brash, flamboyant,
heart-on-sleeve, showmanship raised
to the level of Art.
Quite logically, the
program opens with the irresistible
Overture to Candide, probably
the snappiest curtain-raiser since Rossini.
Maestro Sado conducts as energetic a
reading as any I’ve heard, although
truth to tell, it’s almost a conductor-proof
piece, given an orchestra that has the
chops to play it. Vocal soloist Kim
Criswell, who is also slighted in the
program notes, delivers a sassy, high-spirited
rendition of my favorite Candide
show-stopper, "I am Easily Assimilated".
The Candide portion of the album
concludes with a 16:28 suite, arranged
in 1998 by Bernstein’s long-time associate
Charlie Harmon. Harmon’s choice of material
differs significantly from the composer’s
own 1977 suite, but it’s equally engaging
and it receives a red-hot performance
from Sado and the Lamoureux band.
Bernstein went to Hollywood
in 1953, starry-eyed and full of great
ambitions, but he found the constraints
of the studio system onerous and maintained
to his dying day that his best music
for Elia Kazan’s masterful On The
Waterfront (1954) never made it
past the cutting room floor. Lenny recycled
what he regarded as the choicest bits
into a symphonic poem, and conducted
the premiere at Tanglewood, with the
Boston Symphony, one year after the
movie opened.
I’ve always thought
this was one of Lenny’s strongest pieces.
The tough-guys-rumble music, clearly
inspired by Tchaikovsky’s sword-fight
episodes in Romeo and Juliet, packs
an enormous wallop, and the love music
still rips through me like a can-opener.
If you’ll indulge me, please, I’d like
to recount a real-life personal epiphany
associated with this music. During my
hippy days, I was rather closely associated
with the "underground cinema"
movement, and I attended several monumentally
debauched parties at one or another
of Andy Warhol’s studios - personally,
I couldn’t stand the little creep, but
a good party is a good party, and one
met some very interesting people at
those affairs. I staggered out of the
place just before dawn, shagged-out
as a pariah dog but still buzzing insanely
from an assortment of illegal substances,
and wended my way toward the nearest
subway entrance by leaping over a series
of tenement roofs. At one point, I paused
to savor a rare, unobstructed view all
the way from East 28th Street
down to the Battery, the Statue of Liberty,
and the early-morning shuffle of the
Staten Island Ferry – in other words,
the whole titanic sweep of mid-to-lower
Manhattan and even out to the misty
horizon beyond. The city was wreathed
in steam and fog, great freighters sailed
with the tide for exotic destinations,
the traffic noises were starting to
pick up for the morning rush, and the
serried ranks of sky-scrapers were still
shrouded in darkness, looming like a
vast array of megalithic totems … and
suddenly, the sun exploded over the
waters, swollen and grainy, its color
a barbaric smoky orange, its first slanting
rays just brushing the concrete towers
with the color of old, dried blood.
It was a stupendous sight, by far the
most dynamite sunrise I ever saw in
New York. Well, actually, I didn’t see
all that many, given my lifestyle at
the time, but you get the idea ....
And so help me God,
from the moment I paused to look south
to the moment the sun finally rose above
the horizon – unbidden and unexpected
– the music from On the Waterfront
resounded in my head, as loud and clear
as if a micro-sized version of the Philharmonic
had crawled in through my ears. Ever
since that morning, Bernstein’s suite
has been, for me, THE sound of New York
City, in all its grime and glory.
Sado’s performance
may not be quite as pointed and revelatory-of-detail
as Marin Alsop’s recent Naxos recording
(but then, she learned the score literally
at the composer’s elbow), but it has
tremendous epic sweep and builds to
a majestic climax punctuated by truly
elemental tam-tam strokes. As an interpretation
it ranks right up there with Alsop’s
and the composer’s own, and is better-recorded
than either.
The two selections
from On The Town comprise the
Time Square section of the Three
Dance Episodes plus Condon &
Green’s rollicking "I Can Cook,
Too!", given a suitably rowdy performance
by Ms Criswell.
She also polishes off
the CD with a fine, sensitive rendition
of "Somewhere", the West
Side Story number that is surely
one of the most beautiful love songs
ever to grace a Broadway musical. But
the competition here is so formidable
as to be intimidating. This version
is as good as any and more gripping
than most, but it seems tacked-on, almost
as an afterthought, and as a result
it’s rather anticlimactic.
All in all, though,
this CD is a fine sampler of Bernstein’s
theater music. The recorded sound is
resplendent, the performances intensely
committed, and the selections, except
for the positioning of "Somewhere",
have been chosen with good judgment.
Still, given the level of passion and
panache shown by the musicians, it’s
downright disgraceful that the producers
chose to omit even a brief paragraph
about Maestro Sado and Ms Criswell.
It’s not as though the notes are all
that voluminous ( 2.5 pages in three
languages), with room to spare for all
the song lyrics, and with at least 1.5
pages’ worth of blank space. Someone
in the corporate food-chain simply made
an egregious decision to slight the
performers, and for the life of me,
I cannot figure out why. They certainly
earned some ink.
And to the members
of the Lamoureux Orchestra, let me say:
ladies and gentlemen, all is forgiven.
On this recording, you play like angels,
and I shall never again disparage your
professionalism.
William R. Trotter
Kim Criswell, mezzo 
