With summer winding down and Leonard Bernstein’s birthday right around the corner (on August 25), this week on “The Lost Chord,” I thought it would be a good time to enjoy a program of valedictory works by two complementary composers.
Bernstein’s autobiographical “Arias and Barcarolles” (1988) was winnowed from its original conception for four singers to a leaner combination of mezzo-soprano, baritone, and piano duet. The texts of the eight-movement song cycle, personal reflections on the nature of familial love, in all its layered harmonies and discords, are mostly by Bernstein himself. One of them, “Little Smary,” is a bedtime story his mother told him when he was a child. Others are propelled by witty repartee and amusing inside jokes.
The title is taken from a humorous episode Bernstein liked to recount, stemming from a meeting with President Eisenhower in 1960. After a performance at the White House, Eisenhower remarked, “I liked that last piece you played. It’s got a theme. I like music with a theme, not all them arias and barcarolles.”
The work was subsequently orchestrated, with the composer’s consent, by Bright Sheng, but personally, I think it works much better in this earlier form. It’s nimbler and more intimate, and the words land more cleanly.
Another composer whose influence on American music was incalculable was Antonin Dvořák. While director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York from 1892 to 1895, the revered Czech master was impressed by the character and individuality of what he heard all around him as only an outsider could be. He became intoxicated with the sounds of a diverse, vibrant culture, and was astonished that few had noticed what was so clearly evident – that the foundation of a nationally-identifiable school of music was not be achieved in emulating European models, but rather in assimilating the great American melting pot, through folk song, Native American elements, and especially what was then termed Negro spirituals. He led by example, composing works such as the “American” String Quartet and the “New World” Symphony.
Following his academic and administrative sojourn, Dvořák returned to Bohemia, where in his later years, he focused on opera and symphonic poems based on some astonishingly dark fairy tales. An exception was his final orchestral utterance, “A Hero’s Song” (1897). Admittedly, there is a somewhat sobering, somber interlude at its core, but this only serves to emphasize the swaggering exuberance of the 22-minute work’s outer, swashbuckling sections. It’s astonishing and gratifying to hear Dvořák go out in such a blaze of glory!
I hope you’ll join me for “Graceful Exits” – final works of Bernstein and Dvořák – on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
PHOTOS: Dvořák receiving an honorary doctorate from Cambridge in 1891 (left); Bernstein letting it all hang out in Fairfield, CT, in 1988
