Review: Bernstein’s spirit brought back to the stage, from ‘Fancy Free’ to ‘1600 Pennsylvania Avenue’

While guest-conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein reportedly chided the musicians once for overly polished playing. He must have felt it somehow diminished the all-too-human spirit he was looking for in music.

That certainly wasn’t a problem with the “Bernstein on Stage” program Friday night at the Valley Performing Arts Center, the Northridge venue recently renamed the Soraya.

The concert, celebrating the centennial of Bernstein’s birth in 2018, featured John Mauceri leading the New West Symphony and also engaged the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, the Women of Areté Vocal Ensemble, the California Lutheran University Choir and four vocal soloists. In all, 130 musicians were on stage for this whirlwind chronological tour of selections from all eight of Bernstein’s stage compositions, from 1944’s “Fancy Free” to 1976’s “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Yes, “Bernstein on Stage” was often too big, with inevitably untidy vocals and ensemble playing, but overall it persuasively conveyed Bernstein’s all-encompassing spirit. As Mauceri notes in his new memoir and guide to the art of the conductor, “Maestros and Their Music,” Bernstein was often criticized for, among other things, “his unbridled embrace of life, his just-too-much-ness” as a musician and educator.

Mauceri, who led the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra from 1990 to 2006, proved a genial and authoritative guide to Bernstein’s career in the theater. The concert got off to a puzzling start with Billie Holiday’s 1946 recording of Bernstein’s vocal blues song “Big Stuff” from “Fancy Free.”

In the selections from “On the Town” and “Trouble in Tahiti” that followed, Mauceri’s careful tempos sometimes dampened the jazzy snap a smaller orchestra pit band would have generated. A highlight was coloratura soprano Celena Shafer’s and mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzmán’s charming poignancy in “Ohio” from “Wonderful Town.”

Bernstein’s composing took a giant leap in the 1950s, and so did the concert’s second half. Though not seamless, Shafer’s rendition of the fiendishly difficult “Candide” coloratura showpiece, “Glitter and Be Gay,” brought the audience to its feet. Also from “Candide,” tenor Casey Candebat gave a moving, finely articulated rendition of “Eldorado.”

Unsurprisingly, the orchestral “Mambo” and the songs “Maria” and “Tonight” from 1957’s “West Side Story” were winningly rendered by Mauceri, Candebat and Shafer. Baritone Davis Gaines brought depth and vocal contrast to “Simple Song” from 1971’s “Mass.” Gaines, with Mauceri and the New West Symphony, expressed Bernstein’s wit in an exuberant account of “The President Jefferson March” from “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.” A flop at its 1976 premiere, the show can be seen as an inventive precursor to “Hamilton.”

The concert concluded in lovely fashion with another recording: Bernstein on piano accompanying soprano Eileen Farrell in the touching song “Some Other Time” from “On the Town,” in which he sings a phrase in his distinctively gravelly bass voice.

“Bernstein on Stage” repeated Saturday at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza and will be performed again Sunday afternoon at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center.

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