Leonard Bernstein: Piano & Chamber Music

Wayne Marshall, Maurice Steger, Maria Kliegel, Peter Roth, Benyamin Nuss & others

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Cat No: AVI8553411

Release Date: 05 April 2019

Label: C-Avi

Packaging Type: Box Set

No of Units: 3

Barcode: 4260085534708

Genres: Classical

Description

This 3 CD Anniversary Edition celebrates what would have been Leonard Bernstein's 100th birthday. The impressive, high calibre artist roster led by Wayne Marshall play little known works for piano and chamber music written by Bernstein over five decades.

Games with codes, cyphers, codenames and identities run through Bernstein's entire output: references to himself, to people in his private circle, or to works by other composers from all periods and almost all genres from Baroque to jazz. They are easiest to detect in Anniversaries, a series of brief cycles he started writing in the 1940s, soon after his rapid ascension to become one of the most adulated stars on the American music scene. He finished composing the last group of Anniversary pieces in 1988, two years before his death. All in all, Anniversaries comprises a total of 29 pieces: one could affectionately describe them as rapidly sketched portraits without necessarily having to dismiss them as "sweet nothings" (even though Bernstein admittedly changed the dedication of some; others were admittedly written more out of politeness than out of a strong inner need). He dedicated the first piece to his friend and mentor, composer Aaron Copland; the very last one is based on a song entitled First Love, which he had written in fond memory of his mother.

The Sabras cycle, written in four parts (originally planned as six), emerged in the early 1950s in conjunction with Bernstein's first visits to Israel. Hailing from the name for a cactus fruit, "Sabra" designates a Jew born on Israeli territory. The first piece resurfaces as a Lamento in the musical Candide, and structural similarities with the middle of three movements of the Piano Sonata (composed when Bernstein was still a Harvard student) are also noticeable. The Piano Sonata is a challenging, elaborate work that clearly reveals the influence of Aaron Copland.

Bernstein did not compose any other relatively extended or significant work for solo piano until 1981, when he wrote Touches as a commission for the Van Cliburn Competition. Inspired by a model by Copland, the work consists of eight variations and a coda, all based on a chorale theme borrowed from Virgo Blues, written, in turn, for his daughter Jamie's 26th birthday in 1978.

Leonard's Vision belongs to that late phase in which Bernstein, following early worldwide successes such as West Side Story, seems to have fallen out of luck as a composer, while as a conductor he conversely went from strength to strength.

Likewise written during Bernstein's days as a student, the Piano Trio is a further instance where he confronted his outlook with a traditional form – in this case, one of the most distinguished genres of chamber music. Apart from Classical-Romantic and Impressionist reminiscences, the Piano Trio also
treads in the footsteps of Bela Bartok by incorporating a number of motifs from folklore. Bernstein re-used certain sections of the Piano Trio in his first musical, On The Town.

Although brief, the Dance Suite is a further highly significant ensemble piece for winds, and, what is more, a true legacy for posterity, since it was premiered just a few months before Bernstein's death within the framework of an anniversary celebration of the American Ballet Theatre at New York Metropolitan Opera. The suite consists in a homage to modern ballet and to five of its main representatives, each mentioned by name, and with whom Bernstein cultivated close musical and personal friendships.

From Bernstein's late period, the Variations on an Octatonic Scale are small miniatures he wrote at his retreat in Key West for the recorder-playing daughter of a friend. The variations found their way into the Concerto for Orchestra, which Bernstein premiered himself at the conductor's desk in 1989, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Two compositions for four-hand piano viz. two pianos reveal much about Bernstein's evolution in terms of style. The first is clearly a work of youth, written when he was still a piano student of Heinrich Gebhard in Boston and performed in public in tandem with a female colleague at a class recital.
(Excerpts from the Booklet Notes by Johannes Jansen)

Artists
Wayne Marshall
Fernando Nina
Jeffrey Kant
Hans Nickel
Jennifer Micallef
Maurice Steger
Paul van Zelm
Maria Kliegel
Andy Miles
Lisa Schumann
Chad Hoopes
Peter Mönkediek
Peter Roth
Benyamin Nuss
Tracklisting