Bernstein Celebration, Barbican, London
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The big band wore tails. But appearances can be deceptive - particularly when Leonard Bernstein's Prelude, Fugue and Riffs is on the stands.
The big band wore tails. But appearances can be deceptive - particularly when Leonard Bernstein's Prelude, Fugue and Riffs is on the stands. Played like it was played here at the top of this LSO Bernstein Celebration it's hot and spontaneous enough not to sound written down at all. A jamming, jumping, hot rod of a piece that comes off the page like it never belonged there in the first place.
No one did musical sleight of hand quite like Bernstein. This snazzy hybrid is so thoroughly infused with the spirit of jazz, the feverish imperative of improvisation, that you just don't notice how structured it is. The Prelude jack-hammers into the best stripper music since burlesque was big, the Fugue for five saxophones is so coolly disguised as not to sound fugal at all, and the Riffs, send the solo clarinet reeling towards an inevitable shriek of triumph.
Waves of nostalgia traversed the first half of this concert. Bernstein's presence at the helm of this orchestra is pretty indelible. Who could forget any of his appearances with them - some in this very hall. One I particularly remember featured his Second Symphony ("The Age of Anxiety") after W H Auden, a piece that was always a personal pilgrimage for Bernstein. How closely he identified with the four strangers meeting up in a Third Avenue bar at the start of Auden's poem. His own lifelong quest for meaning, for faith - for himself - gave this marvellous work a particular poignancy. There is no more haunting music in all of Bernstein than that of the two solo clarinets at the outset. Together and yet so alone. Two's company and yet not.
And Bernstein's musical inquisitiveness was at its most acute here, the variations of part one serving as the perfect metaphor for his quest. Marin Alsop and the pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet made them sound like inventions of the moment and when no answers were forthcoming, they (like Bernstein) partied. The jazzy "Masque" for piano and percussion alone was properly, eerily disarming and the final affirmation - so proudly, defiantly, Bernstein - hugely cathartic.
The second half - "Bernstein on Broadway" - was an anti-climax after the "theatre" of the symphony. Kim Criswell and members of the Maida Vale Singers embarked on a tour of the shows, too bitty to be satisfying. The stage "business" was embarrassing, the inter-song "chat" unnecessary.
Kim Criswelllives and breathes this stuff. So what was she doing with the music in front of her? In numbers such as "I Can Cook Too" from On The Town and "One Hundred Easy Ways to Lose a Man", Rosalind Russell's man-bating seminar from Wonderful Town, it's fatal to be reminded that anyone (not even lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green) could put words into the mouths of these indomitable broads.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments