According to Leonard Bernstein’s biographer,
Joan Peyser, the ballet Dybbuk was partly inspired by
the success of Fiddler on the Roof. Jerome Robbins
had choreographed Fiddler in 1964 and asked Bernstein
to compose ballet music with a similar background. It took
Bernstein nine years to react and he started working on the
score in 1973. The New York City Ballet opened their 1974 spring
season with it. The ballet itself failed but Bernstein transformed
it into a concert piece which he conducted with the New York
Philharmonic the following year. This recording is derived from
the original score for the ballet.
Written to commemorate the 25th
anniversary of the state of Israel the plot for Dybbuk
is complicated and, according to the cover notes ‘concerns a
spirit that seeks to enter the body of a living person’ while
Bernstein’s score - which includes solo sections for baritone
and bass - was based on some form of numerical system. ‘Every
note in the ballet’, he said at the time of the premiere, ‘was
arrived at by the cabalistic or analytic manipulations of numbers.’
Which makes more sense when you realise that each of letter
of the 22-letter Hebraic alphabet is also a numeral. ‘The cabalistic
numbers’, Bernstein continued, ‘adapt almost naturally to the
basic components of the 12-tone system’. Thus the battle between
good and evil is identified as the contrast between passages
of tonality and atonality respectively.
Fancy Free was composed - once again at the urging
of Jerome Robbins - thirty years earlier and marks the first
success of Bernstein as a composer. It is as diametrically
different to Dybbuk, both thematically and musically,
as Sudoku is to quick crosswords. Whereas the later work marked
Bernstein’s continuing attempt to be recognised as a serious
classical composer Fancy Free is almost Broadwayish in
its concept. Bernstein described the plot this way: ‘[It is]
a brief, wonderful look at 25 minutes in the life of three sailors
who had 24 hours’ shore-leave in New York and had some balletic
adventures in a bar – indulging in a certain amount of competition
culminating in a fight, and then [they] wound up pals again.
Beautiful ballet!’ Within a year of its first performance Fancy
Free was staged 160 times and was followed by a dozen performances
at the New York Metropolitan Opera House.
Inasmuch as this recording conveys the original
concept of the Dybbuk ballet envisaged by Bernstein this
album is priceless. I am not quite sure that the vocals would
work if and when the ballet is performed on stage but if you
treat it as a piece of music and forget to visualise dancers
pirouetting, pas-de-deuxing etc on a stage, then the work is
quite original. The high
point
comes in the Exorcism episode when atonality reaches its highest
expression with brass, percussion and strings exploding into
a cacophony of sound.
Fancy Free is much less strident and more pleasing
to the ear. Of course, the basic tunes and central plot were
incorporated into the film On the Town with Gene Kelly
and Frank Sinatra. Plus the score has been recorded on numerous
occasions by other conductors and recording labels. A juke-box
playing a blues number in the distance - originally sung by
Billie Holliday but sung here by Abby Burke - adds an element
of originality to the opening scene. The basic concept is pure
music-theatre, hard-edged and pulsating with forward-urging
rhythms and themes. It could only have been composed by Leonard
Bernstein.
If you like your Bernstein and have never
heard Dybbuk this is a good investment in your musical
education. Fancy Free has been done before but this
recording is just as good as you’ll get anywhere.
Randolph Magri-Overend
see also Review
by Hubert Culot
Naxos American Classics page
Mel Ulrich (baritone)*; Mark Risinger (bass)*; Abby Burke (vocal)**;
Stephen Kummer (piano)**; Samuel D Bacco (drums)**
