This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” to coincide with what would have been the 101st birthday of Leonard Bernstein, we’ll do our part in helping to wrap up the two-year, worldwide celebration of the Lenny centenary with, if not the most profound of his recordings, then surely one of the more unusual.
Bernstein was a lifelong admirer of the Philadelphia-born composer Marc Blitzstein. He mounted a performance of Blitzstein’s notorious pro-labor musical, “The Cradle Will Rock,” while still at student at Harvard. He also dedicated his own opera, “Trouble in Tahiti” to him.
Blitzstein’s “Airborne Symphony” was written on a commission from the U.S. Army while the composer was serving in its Air Force. The work traces the evolution of flight from its conception in theory to its use in modern warfare. The piece was envisaged by him as a big symphony on the theme of “the sacred struggle of airborne free men of the world… to crush the monstrous fascist obstructionist in their path.”
Blitzstein began the work in 1943, at the height of World War II. It would not be completed until after the war, in 1946. Bernstein conducted the premiere virtually while the ink was still wet on the page. He recorded the piece twice. We’ll hear the second of the two recordings, from 1966, with Orson Welles as narrator, vocal soloists, the New York Philharmonic, and the men of the Choral Arts Society.
I hope you’ll join me in celebrating Bernstein and Blitzstein – wrapping up the Bernstein centenary – on “Flight of Fancy,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Bernstein sings Blitzstein’s “Zipperfly”
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