Music
JAMES, HIBBARD
MUSIC By Hibbard James Leonard Bernstein At the Philharmonic The most important announcement in the American musical world during 1957 was the appointment of Leonard Bernstein as the sole...
...Unfortunately, something has been radically wrong with the Philharmonic since World War II...
...His concerts are solid sell-outs for the next several weeks, and he has been getting excellent response from critics and audiences alike...
...He gets excellent results, and altogether looks and sounds like a young and revitalized Koussevitsky...
...But the morale of the musicians has slipped lower and lower, a fact which has become all too obvious in their performances...
...For a number of years, there had been dark mutterings about Mr...
...The musicians seemed to keep one eye on the scores and the other on Bernstein, and the result was a notably sensitive and beautiful performance...
...Judson and the effect of his maneuvers on the quality of the orchestra, but up to two years ago no one had been unkind enough to say anything out loud...
...Judson was stepping down from active management of the orchestra and that things would shortly be better...
...Musically, the latter is little more than chopsticks with a conservatory education...
...MUSIC By Hibbard James Leonard Bernstein At the Philharmonic The most important announcement in the American musical world during 1957 was the appointment of Leonard Bernstein as the sole conductor of the New York Philharmonic...
...He has both talent and energy in almost superhuman abundance...
...During last season, there was noticeable improvement, and the Bernstein appointment gave the orchestra another shot in the arm...
...Although I feel that it's still too early to tell if he can overcome the considerable obstacles in his way, the orchestra hasn't sounded so well in some time...
...The next three seasons will tell if he can keep up the pace...
...The real question remains: Can he keep it up...
...The orchestra has been playing less and less well, and there have been unkind mutterings from both the critics and the subscribers...
...I hope he can...
...Then, on April 29, 1956, Howard Taubman devoted an entire page in the Sunday music section of the New York Times to a devastating blast—a musical Hiroshima...
...To both see and hear Bernstein and the reviving Philharmonic, I went recently to a concert which featured Strauss's Don Quixote and the first performance in the West of Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto...
...Indeed, his recent appearances with the Philharmonic have given that hope extra substance...
...Bernstein, and the hope is that he can reverse the trend...
...But does he have the firmness to discipline the men and resist the blandishments of Columbia Artists Management...
...In brief, Taubman ascribed the deplorable state of the Philharmonic to the lack of a strong, permanent conducting staff and to the fact that Mr...
...But behind every music lover's hopeful smile there is still a doubtful shadow cast by the all-powerful figure of Arthur Judson, the orchestra's manager...
...Both are excellently done...
...He makes liberal use of the master's thrusts and lunges to communicate his meaning, plus the extra tremulo stick movements and slightly pained intensity of expression when he wants a change of dynamics...
...In the past, under the leadership of such legendary figures as Arturo Tos-canini, a great orchestra has given additional luster to great musical reputations...
...If you aren't able to get to Carnegie Hall, or to hear the orchestra's Sunday afternoon broadcasts over CBS, you can listen to a recent recording made by Bernstein and the Philharmonic—Stravinsky's Firebird Suite and Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet (Columbia ML 5182...
...Can he once again fuse several dozen capable members of Local 802 into the voice of a great orchestra...
...Up to now, things have been going well...
...Judson used the orchestra as a personal playground for employing the conductors and soloists maintained by his Columbia Artists Management...
...In view of all this, Bernstein's first appearance with the Philharmonic this season was, not surprisingly, able to generate quite a bit of excitement...
...Since 1943, two able and eminent conductors, Artur Rodzinski and Dimitri Mitropoulos, have done their best to pump new life into the organization (we discount the pyrotechnic efforts of Leopold Stokowski between 1947 and 1950...
...The charge was taken seriously by the Philharmonic's Board of Directors...
...Now comes the youthful, energetic Mr...
...In his podium manner, Bernstein is remarkably like his mentor, the late Serge Koussevitsky...
...Judson may have stepped down officially, but he is still lurking in the background, and he still controls an uncomfortably large part of the musical life of America's concert stages...
...From the point of view of prestige and influence, the conductor-ship of the Philharmonic is probably the premier musical post in America...
...I have been as hopeful as anyone for his success, and have been listening to some of his new recordings and attending these first few concerts in a mood of slightly wary anticipation...
...Before long, it announced that Mr...
...In fact, there have been times in the past few seasons when the Philharmonic has sounded less like one of the world's great orchestras than like the East Cupcake (Iowa) Civic Symphony...
Vol. 41 • January 1958 • No. 3
