Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Leonard Bernstein

Before Mixed Martial Arts, Presidents Aimed for Stravinsky

The new norm is to have steel-cage death matches on the South Lawn, but in 1962 an American president might invite Igor Stravinsky to the White House. On Stravinsky’s birthday, here’s an amusing account of the composer’s visit with the Kennedys:

https://www.whitehousehistory.org/igor-stravinsky-at-the-white-house

“Despite such criticism – which was entirely typical of Stravinsky’s unfiltered personality – he clearly remembered the visit with fondness and gratitude. In January, 1964 he commemorated John F. Kennedy – who had been assassinated on November 22, 1963 – by composing ‘Elegy for J.F.K.,’ a vocal piece with words by W.H. Auden. ‘I felt that the events of November were being too quickly forgotten,’ the composer told The New York Times, ‘and I wished to protest.’”

Leonard Bernstein was also in attendance at the dinner. Bernstein’s “Fanfare for JFK” was heard for the first time on the eve of Kennedy’s inauguration, also on this date, though one year earlier. It’s only 40 seconds long, so if you blink, you’ll miss it.

In 1978, Bernstein gave the opening speech at the first Kennedy Center Honors, at which the honorees included Marian Anderson, Richard Rodgers, George Balanchine, Fred Astaire, and Arthur Rubinstein.

I’ll spare you the entirety of Bernstein’s “Mass,” commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971, but here’s the piece’s hit tune, “A Simple Song.”

The questions, where are our Bernsteins and Stravinskys – or for that matter, our Marian Andersons, Richard Rodgerses, George Balanchines, Fred Astaires, and Arthur Rubinsteins – and why are they not honored at the White House, seem moot.

Stravinsky’s concern about the events of November 1963 being forgotten were echoed by many Americans in December 2025. Some presidents try to set an example by leading in a spirit of hope and aspiration. Others attempt to validate themselves by affixing their names to the Kennedy Center.

June 17, 2026
Expanding My Horizons with Carl Nielsen

When I first heard Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 3, I was sweating it out in a one-room efficiency in West Philadelphia that I shared with two of my classmates, while making up a math course I had flubbed at Temple University.

It was the summer of ’85, there was no air conditioning, and I studied and slept in a netted hammock suspended from two bicycle hooks I had screwed into the door frames to prevent being surprised by mice. There was always movement in the lone trash bag that sat exposed on the linoleum in the corner of the kitchenette, and to prove a point once I lobbed a sneaker into it, from the safety of my resting place, so that the rodents poured out of it and scurried around the apartment, sending one of my roommates, the one whose name was on the lease, shrieking into his bunk. He had a job canvasing for a political organization, so he was gone all day and would stagger back every night after last-call to sketch with intensity under a bright, exposed lightbulb that shone down in my face. Somewhere along the way, he brought home a turtle, which he kept in the bathtub and fed raw hamburger, until I couldn’t take its imprisonment any longer and finally released it into Fairmount Park.

The other roommate had the good sense to get a girlfriend, so he was never there. His contribution was a makeshift bunk bed hastily assembled from planks he had plucked from the garbage. The top bunk was usually vacant, due to his absence, and the bottom bunk was where my politically-motivated, alcohol-fueled, musky, mulchy-footed friend slept between me and the sole window fan.

Occasionally, I’d glimpse a cockroach making its way down one of the ropes of my hammock, and I’d start rocking about, trying to dislodge it. More than once, one of the bike hooks let go. The roaches were everywhere. There were even roaches in the freezer.

It was under these circumstances, one boxed-in, sweltering afternoon, that I first experienced Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 3, subtitled “Sinfonia espansiva.” It was broadcast on WFLN, Philadelphia’s classical music station for nearly 50 years (sadly, now defunct). Nielsen’s aspirational music opened up horizons for me and offered glimpses of larger things.

The recording was conducted by Leonard Bernstein. For those of you who aren’t familiar with him, Carl Nielsen is Denmark’s most celebrated composer. Yet, internationally, his music has struggled to take root in the shadow of that other great bard of the North, Jean Sibelius. This is a shame, since, far from being a Sibelius knock-off, Nielsen forged his own, immediately-recognizable style. Bernstein believed Nielsen’s rightful place was as Sibelius’ equal.

“I think many people are in for pleasant surprises as they get to know Nielsen,” he said at a centennial celebration of the composer’s birth, “his rough charm, his swing, his drive, his rhythmic surprises, his strange power of harmonic and tonal relationships – and especially his constant unpredictability – all these are irresistible. I feel confident that Nielsen’s time has come.”

Hey, he was right about Mahler. But that was in 1965, and Lenny’s prophetic lightning failed to strike twice. Sixty-one years on, with many more recordings and performances to choose from, Nielsen’s music remains, stubbornly, an acquired taste, if a rewarding one. There really is nothing else quite like it – the puckish wit, the ambiguities, the quirky juxtaposition of seemingly disparate melodies, harmonies, and key signatures, all very often shot through with a sense of hope and optimism that rises above the chaos.

I only lived in that hell hole for about a month, one summer session, thankfully, just long enough to make-up my credits, and then it was off to the greenery of my hometown to detox. But I was in the process of selling my soul for a piece of parchment, a degree, so in the fall it was back to Philadelphia.

After the purchase of my first CD-player, in order to feed my habit, I took a part-time job as a clerk at Sam Goody, a record shop then located at 11th and Chestnut Streets, which at the time had the most extensive classical music section in the city. (This was before the arrival of Tower Records.) It was there that I acquired Neeme Järvi’s Prokofiev cycle, Bernard Haitink’s Shostakovich cycle, Adrian Boult’s Vaughan Williams cycle, and my first recording of Nielsen’s Symphony No. 3. Essentially, I signed my paycheck back over to the company in exchange for CDs. I remember my frustration that so much of the good stuff was still only on LP.

The Nielsen recording was not the classic Leonard Bernstein performance I had heard on the radio – which had yet to be transferred to compact disc – but a newer, digital recording with Myung-Whun Chung and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, on the BIS label. And I have to say, giving all credit to Bernstein for his advocacy of Nielsen’s music, I believe Chung’s recording outshines his in every way. To this day, I find it to be one of the most satisfying Nielsen recordings. It must have been within my first ten CD purchases. I remember when I had so few, I could keep them all in a shoebox. Now I’ve got a library of a good 10,000. You might say it has gone “espansiva.”

What exactly did Nielsen mean by that choice of subtitle? Robert Simpson wrote that the use of “espansiva” suggests an “outward growth of the mind’s scope.” There is certainly a sensation of expanding horizons about the piece, which includes a pastoral slow movement complete with wordless solos for soprano and baritone. According to Nielsen, the symphony concludes with “a hymn to work and the healthy activity of living.” All I know is that it fills me with optimism and happiness.

A tip of the blond brush cut to Carl Nielsen on his birthday. Perhaps his time will come. For me, it arrived in a very different climate from that of Copenhagen, in tropical West Philadelphia, in the summer 1985.

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Leonard Bernstein conducts the Royal Danish Orchestra on its own turf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNNP_4TYnV4

Myung-Whun Chung and the Gothenburg Symphony

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS_-K_w9wdM

“Espansiva: A Portrait of Carl Nielsen”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0a1CPcTDEA&t

June 9, 2026
In the Open Air with Marc Blitzstein on “The Lost Chord”

This week on “The Lost Chord,” to coincide with Armed Forces Day, we’ll listen to Marc Blitzstein’s “Airborne Symphony.”

The programmatic work, a quasi-oratorio, was written on a commission from the U.S. Army, while the composer was serving in its Air Force. It traces the evolution of flight from its conception in theory to its use in modern warfare.

The piece was envisaged by Blitzstein 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.” Begun in 1943, at the height of World War II, it would not be completed until 1946, after the conflict had ended.

Leonard Bernstein, a lifelong admirer of the composer (he mounted a performance of Blitzstein’s pro-labor musical, “The Cradle Will Rock,” while still at student at Harvard, and dedicated his own opera, “Trouble in Tahiti,” to him), conducted the premiere virtually while the ink was still wet on the page.

He recorded the piece twice. We’ll hear the second of those recordings, from 1966, with Orson Welles the narrator, vocal soloists, the New York Philharmonic, and the men of the Choral Arts Society.

It may not be the most profound of Bernstein’s recordings, but it surely is one of the most unusual. I hope you’ll join me for “Flight of Fancy” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!

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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!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu

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PHOTO: Blitzstein and Bernstein, dining al fresco

May 16, 2026
In the Blink of an Eye, Michael Tilson Thomas Is No More

This is one of those days I always knew would come – at least for the last five years or so – and now I am very sorry it’s here. For the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas has died.

In my memory, Tilson Thomas will always be the effusive, boyish protégé of Leonard Bernstein. There are many, I’m sure, who during those early years predicted he would inherit Bernstein’s mantle as the most recognized and beloved American conductor. Alas, it did not come to pass. It’s not that he wasn’t recognized and beloved, but there could be only one Leonard Bernstein. Still, MTT had a great career and a rewarding life. You can’t fault excellence for not attaining superstardom.

At one time or another, he held positions as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, founder and artistic director of the New World Symphony (an ensemble made up of gifted young musicians), and music director of the San Francisco Symphony. He also enjoyed a fruitful relationship with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, of which he was once assistant conductor and with which he made some classic recordings.

Over0 the course of his career, Tilson Thomas amassed a cabinet full of Grammys, a Peabody Award, a National Medal of Arts, and a Kennedy Center Honor. Like Bernstein, he was also a composer. A few of his works reflected his Jewish heritage and honored his grandparents’ experience in the Yiddish theater. (He was the grandson of Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky.)

There’s plenty in his discography that’s given me great pleasure over the years: recordings of the symphonies of Charles Ives; orchestral works of Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky; a colorful selection of “Bachianas Brasileiras” by Heitor Villa-Lobos; a fascinating curio, “The American Flag,” by Antonín Dvořák; an album of the late choral works of Beethoven (including “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage”) that I acquired on vinyl from my local record store when I was in high school; of course his Gershwin records, especially the one with “Rhapsody in Blue” in its original version; and a knock-out disc of American orchestral works, including Walter Piston’s Symphony No. 2, Ives’ “Three Places in New England,” and that prickly masterpiece, Carl Ruggles’ “Sun-Treader.”

MTT recorded the complete works of Ruggles, a cantankerous, problematic composer, who wrote music of uncompromising integrity and dissonance. These were released on a two-LP set on CBS Masterworks. It must have sold about five copies, because the label never bothered to reissue it on compact disc, so that it became a kind of Holy Grail among collectors. It finally reappeared on the independent label Other Minds, 37 years later, in 2017! It would have been nice had they retained the design of the original album, but some of the elements were the same. Significantly, they were able to hang on to the program notes, which were supplemented by photos and an essay by Lou Harrison.

Tilson Thomas conducted the first concert I ever saw with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Mann Music Center in the summer of 1984, when he was joined by André Watts, the soloist in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, and after intermission led the ensemble in Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra – with a thunderstorm looming, no less. Why they didn’t clear the lawn, I have no idea. You were just expected to pull your shirt over your head or run for cover in those days.

The last time I saw him was in Philadelphia in 2008, this time indoors at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, when he was joined by Paul Jacobs for Copland’s Organ Symphony and then, on the concert’s second half, he conducted Mahler’s Symphony No. 5.

As is so often the case, we tend to take what’s available to us for granted. So it was like a splash of ice water, when five years ago, Tilson Thomas was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. Although he scaled back his activities for treatment and to husband his resources, he continued to perform, and during the period, a sort of sustained victory lap, he was received by audiences everywhere with notable warmth.

His husband, Joshua Robison, died only two months ago. The two met in junior high school and were together for 50 years.

Tilson Thomas is one of those figures I will always remember in the summer of his youth. I recollect watching him play Copland’s Piano Variations on a PBS television documentary about the composer, broadcast over 40 years ago now, and his commentary about the piece, which he compared to a skyscraper in sound. I can’t get over how quickly time passes.

Michael Tilson Thomas was 81 years-old. R.I.P.

April 23, 2026
Bernstein and Haydn: Synergy of Strange Bedfellows

I’m not sure elegance is near the top of anyone’s list when they consider the attributes of Dionysian Leonard Bernstein. I mean, he could cut a dapper figure, especially during the “matinee idol” years of his youth and early middle-age. He spoke well, and at concert time or before the cameras, he was invariably well-dressed, with that hair and that cigarette, seductively cool in black and white. But by the 1970s, he started to let it all hang out. That’s when he would show up at rehearsal dressed like a French wharf rat, all stubbly, in a striped sailor shirt and neckerchief. You be you, Lenny.

But a strange synergy occurred whenever he conducted the music of Franz Joseph Haydn. Haydn, that most elegant of composers – except when he wasn’t (cue flatulent bassoon jokes) – virtually invented the modern symphony, or perfected it anyway. During the Classical era, it adhered to some pretty strict rules – which Haydn would then either humorously or dramatically manipulate or subvert.

In the arts, it was once common knowledge that the way to freedom was through order. Once you internalize the rules and master the technique, you can pretty much do whatever you want. And no one knew his way around the symphony better than Haydn. He composed at least 106 of them (104 of them numbered) over a period of about 40 years. That’s an astronomic level of devotion to a single form, and it was far from Haydn’s exclusive focus. (He’s also credited as the father of the modern string quartet.)

Bernstein, of course, developed a reputation for bringing great energy and involvement to highly subjective interpretations of music by composers such as Gustav Mahler. At his most thrilling, his identification with the composer could be so complete, it was as if he was creating the music himself. That doesn’t always mean his “identification” was exactly what the composer had in mind. But, totally unexpectedly, this celebrated proponent of some of the most flamboyant music in the repertoire turned out to be an outstanding Haydn interpreter.

Bernstein’s Haydn is marked by great fluency and fun. He just GOT him, and I suspect there wasn’t a hell of a lot of analytical thinking behind it. The way we all just click with certain people and not with others – that’s how it was with these two. The high priest of emotional truth saw past the formal principles of the 18th century to Haydn the man and totally grokked where he was coming from. Haydn at his best is not a dry or boring “textbook” composer. He was a living, breathing human being, full of clever ideas, subject to a range of emotions, and brimming with good humor.

Whenever I need a lift, I need look no further than Lenny’s recordings of the “Paris” Symphonies. Of these, the Symphony No. 82, subtitled the “Bear,” is perhaps my favorite. Bernstein’s “Bear” (not to be confused with a Berenstain Bear) is a treasure, energetic, lyrical, and exhilarating.

FUN FACTS: The first performance was conducted by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Saint-Georges was a talented athlete, a respected swordsman, and the first classical composer of African descent to achieve widespread acclaim in Europe.

The symphony’s nickname, the “Bear,” was bestowed not by Haydn, but by someone else, picking up on the repeated drone in the work’s finale. In those days, dancing bears were accompanied by bagpipes as a popular form of street entertainment. See if you can hear the dancing bear in the fourth movement of Haydn’s symphony.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SjNmqj0czM

When it comes to Lenny’s Haydn, there’s also this precious document, in which he conducts the last movement of the Symphony No. 88 – with his eyes! Of course, he does it as an encore. For the complete performance, you can scroll back to the beginning of the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXEldU1UC70&t=1511s

Want more? Here you go: the “Paris” Symphonies (82-87), the Symphony No. 88, and from the “London” Symphonies, the Symphony No. 93 (with a flatulent bassoon joke in the slow movement), the Symphony No. 94 (the famous “Surprise” Symphony), and the Symphony No. 95. The collection starts with the “Bear.” You can either skip over it or revel in it all over again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOrjmUI5f9Y

Happy birthday, Haydn!

March 31, 2026

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