Bernstein At 100

You would have to have been living under a bush not to know that this year marks the 100^th birthday of American composer Leonard Bernstein, with major symphony orchestras around the world celebrating it.

This dazzling concert by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra reminds us what a powerful presence Bernstein was in 20^th century American music. Frequently called the enfante terrible at the beginning of his career, Bernstein was determined to change the status-quo and he did, putting his indelible stamp on everything he touched which included symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film, Broadway, opera, choral and chamber music.

He was an early influence on New York born conductor Alondra de la Parra, an obvious devotee of his oeuvre and the perfect narrator to bring insight into the works.

The concert began with the Symphonic Suite from On the Waterfront, Bernstein’s only film score and an Academy Award nominee. Top-heavy with brass and percussion motifs and alive with the composer’s favoured jazz and blue-note riffs, the orchestra showed why the work sits alongside Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho as one of the most electrifying Hollywood movie scores of all time.

Chichester Psalms followed, a large choral piece employing orchestra, choir, solo quartet, boy soprano and sung in Hebrew. Riley Petersen and Matthew Redman brought innocence and purity to the boy-soprano parts, whilst Annie Lower, Jessica Low, Mattias Lower and Jon Maskell, moonlighting from Opera Q, added well-placed vocal lines to the combined choirs who lifted the roof off the Concert Hall.

No-one disseminates the sound of New York quite like Bernstein, and W.H. Auden’s poem of four people in a wartime bar in NYC, The Age of Anxiety, offered him unlimited possibilities. It became his Symphony No. 2, which also has jazz and heavy percussion throughout and a haunting theme he recycled from “Ain’t Got No Tears Left”, a song cut from his On the Town score. Swiss pianist Andreas Haefliger brought quiet and steady passion to the theme, whilst delivering the penultimate cadenza with brio.

Wrapping up the concert was the popular Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, with its distinctive finger-snapping, bongos, cowbells and police whistles. The “Somewhere”sequence had almost a prayer-like reverence, whilst the Mambo sounded authentically Latin.

Alondra de la Parra’s podium presence was never less than brilliant, eliciting an orchestral performance that was bold, dynamic and powerful. The encore was the overture from Candide, frequently called “the most exciting overture in Broadway history”, and this performance of it proved that is spades. Bernstein not only deserves buckets of bravos but also the QSO and Alondra!

Peter Pinne      

Photographer: Peter Wallis.