[78-L] Lenny

[DAVID BURNHAM]

I'm impressed by all of the vitriol directed at Bernstein here!  It is so easy to find examples of composers stealing from other composers or even from themselves;  Bach and Handel used their own music over and over, (without records or radio nobody would likely notice), Stravinsky, Brahms, Copland, Tchaikovsky, etc. etc. borrowed themes from others.  The first movement of Weingartner's 6th symphony is a direct steal of the third movement of Schubert's 8th Symphony, (Unfinished), but if these artisans are able to expertly rework the material into something fresh, I have no problem with that.  How many hear Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu without thinking of "I'm always chasing rainbows"?  I would probably never say that Bernstein is my favourite conductor or my favourite interpreter of any composer but I think as a music lover I would be poorer without his interpretations of Haydn, Mahler, Ives, Copland, Shostakovitch, Sibelius, Stravinsky, etc.
  Sometimes his emoting is over the top, sometimes his ego gets between the music and the listener, but I've never had a problem suffering a justified ego.  If you've listened to his Harvard Lectures, you can appreciate the depth of his understanding of the music he is presenting.  Other conductors, such as Celibidache, seem to believe that they know the music much better than the composer himself did, (I don't know of Celibidache ever conducting the music of a female composer), but I've never gotten that feeling from Bernstein; I've always felt he's doing his best to delve into the soul of the composer to find details which, perhaps, were never revealed before.  

While Rhapsody in Blue has jazz elements, I wouldn't really call it jazz;  as far as I know, the entire piece is scored, there are no ad-libbed solos, and I wouldn't think that Bernstein has the same jazz skills as, say, Andre Previn, (who conducts much of the same repertoire as Bernstein, has done an excellent Gershwin recording of the 3 biggies, as well as items that Bernstein never touched such as Elgar and Vaughan-Williams Symphonies).

db



>________________________________
> From: David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
>To: 78-L Mail List <78-l at klickitat.78online.com> 
>Sent: Sunday, July 7, 2013 8:34:59 AM
>Subject: Re: [78-L] Bernstein's Rhapsody
> 
>
>On 7/7/2013 8:56 AM, Don Cox wrote:
>> On 07/07/2013, David Lennick wrote:
>>
>>> Don't get me started on that thief already. Listen to "Fancy Free" and
>>> "On the Town" where he's stolen the theme from the first movement of
>>> Dohnanyi's Serenade in C, as well as a nice chunk of Hindemith's Weber
>>> Variations (which the PSONY premiered at a time when he was probably
>>> backstage scribbling furiously).
>>> dl
>>>
>> If Hindemith can steal from Weber, why can't Bernstein steal from
>> Hindemith ?
>>
>> Regards
>
>Ah, but Lenny didn't call his ballet "Three Dances from Fancy Free, one of them 
>based on a motif from Hindemith's Variations on a theme by Carl Maria von 
>Weber". the Jermiah Symphony is equally derivative (lots of Strauss and 
>Shostakovich).
>
>dl
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