Release Date: 30 September 2006
Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 636943928028
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: BERNSTEIN
Description
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) Fancy Free • Dybbuk Over his composing career Leonard Bernstein collaborated several times with the choreographer Jerome Robbins. Beginning with Fancy Free in 1944, they then worked on the less well known Facsimile in 1946. When, in 1957, Bernstein was working on the musical West Side Story, Robbins was the obvious person to choreograph the dance sequences that make up an important part of its content. Thereafter, Bernstein's often hectic conducting, composing and teaching schedule left time for only one further original collaboration - the ballet Dybbuk, which met with a decidedly equivocal success when it appeared in 1974.Coming between the spectacle Mass (1971) and the musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue(1976), Dybbuk is the second in a sequence of works with which Bernstein sought to convey his complex world view. Following on from his Third Symphony 'Kaddish' (1963) and Chichester Psalms (1965), the ballet incorporates fundamentally Jewish elements, with the then burning issue of tonal versus serial (twelve-note) music finding direct expression in the respective conflict of good and evil.Written to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the state of Israel, Dybbuk draws on the drama by Shlomo Ansky (1863-1920) which concerns the spirit that seeks to enter the body of a living person.Two young men, David and Jonathan, swear an oath of friendship, stating if one should beget a son and the other a daughter, then these children will join in marriage: these children emerge as Channon and Leah. When the ballet begins, Channon's father has died and Leah's father, forgetting his pledge, has arranged for her to marry a wealthy suitor. Desperate to honour his dead father's pledge, and to fulfil the implicit love between them, Channon calls upon the power of the Kabbalah, but the satanic forces conjured up overwhelm and destroy him. At Leah's wedding, his spirit returns in the guise of a dybbuk, possessing her spirit so she speaks with Channon's voice. A rabbinic court is called in order to exorcise the dybbuk, which is duly expelled, but Leah cannot live without her predestined bridegroom, and renounces her own life so that she may follow Channon into oblivion.The ballet opens with Invocation and Trance, where stark orchestral chords and vocal chanting, heard at various points, and drawn from the Havdalah (Jewish Sabbath Service), the Book of Samuel and the Song of Solomon, lead into an angular dance for brass, then strings and winds over a pizzicato bass. This grows in intensity and then dies away before continuing aggressively on full orchestra, before retreating into silence. There follows The Fathers (David & Jonathan) – The Pledge. This section begins with expressive string phrases which give way to a lyrical melody in the winds. It evolves into a stylized dance which continues in the winds before the strings and brass interject and take it over, building to a brief clima
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
Duo Deloro
Davis/Kuenzel/Lovelace
Dale Kavanagh
