Leonard Bernstein: Jeremiah* (Symphony No. 1); The Age of Anxiety (Symphony No. 2); *Divertimento**
Michelle DeYoung, mezzo-soprano; James Tocco, piano
BBC Symphony Players/Leonard Slatkin
Chandos CHAN 9889 [79:13]
The problem with Bernstein’s symphonies has always been—how to put this delicately?—that they aren’t quite symphonies.
At least not in the sense that Piston’s are symphonies, or Harris’s Third is a symphony. They’re something else: brilliantly orchestrated theatrical gestures, autobiographical confessions dressed in symphonic clothing, works that shimmer with surface excitement but sometimes wobble when you press on the architecture. This doesn’t make them failures.
It just makes them Bernstein. Jeremiah, composed when the composer was all of twenty-four, wears its influences on its sleeve—Copland’s rhythmic snap, a dash of Stravinsky’s neo-classical astringency, the emotional fervor of Bloch. The final movement, “Lamentation,” sets passages from the Book of Lamentations in Hebrew, and here the work either convinces you utterly or leaves you cold.
Michelle DeYoung brings considerable heft to this music, her mezzo darker and more operatic than Nan Merriman’s in Bernstein’s first production from 1945. Some will prefer Merriman’s lighter touch, that almost folksong-like directness. I found DeYoung’s fuller-bodied approach entirely persuasive—she doesn’t shy from the music’s theatricality, and why should she?
This is Bernstein, after all, not Webern. Slatkin conducts with complete authority. He met Bernstein only a handful of times, but he’s lived inside American music for decades, and it shows.
The BBC Symphony plays with commitment throughout, though one wishes for just a touch more brilliance in the brass at certain climactic moments. The sound from Watford’s Colosseum is spacious without being cavernous. The Age of Anxiety—that’s Symphony No.
2, though calling it a symphony stretches the term to near breaking point—presents different challenges. Inspired by Auden’s poem (itself inspired by wartime dislocation and existential dread), the work requires a virtuoso pianist who can navigate Bernstein’s jazz-inflected keyboard writing while somehow maintaining symphonic weight. James Tocco is superb.
Listen to his articulation in “The Masque”—crisp, witty, never merely clever. In the extended piano cadenza he finds a genuine sense of improvisation, as if these notes are being discovered rather than reproduced. The work’s episodic structure—fourteen sections grouped into two parts—could feel fragmentary.
Slatkin holds it together through sheer force of will and careful attention to long-line pacing. The “Dirge” emerges with appropriate gravity, the piano part tolling like distant bells. And when the "finale" arrives with its quasi-Coplandesque Americana, Slatkin doesn’t apologize for the stylistic shift….
He embraces it. The Divertimento makes a delightful encore. Written in 1980 for the Boston Symphony’s centenary, it’s Bernstein in pure entertainment mode—eight miniatures that show off his orchestral wizardry without pretending to symphonic depth.
The “Turkey Trot” bounces with infectious energy. The “Blues” gets genuinely dirty, with muted trumpet and sultry percussion that would sound at home in a downtown jazz club. Slatkin clearly relishes this music, and — well — his affection is contagious.
Does this disc solve the fundamental problem of Bernstein’s symphonies? No. But it makes the strongest possible case for them, which is all one can ask.
The performances are first-rate, the sound distinguished — and Slatkin’s interpretive choices consistently intelligent. For those who’ve never warmed to these works — this recording probably won’t change your mind. But for Bernstein enthusiasts—and there are legions of us—this belongs on the shelf alongside the composer’s own recordings.
Sometimes brilliance of surface is enough.
