Bernstein’s Beethoven, After the Wall

Recent reports in the papers and on television notwithstanding, Leonard Bernstein did not play a central role in the fall of East Germany’s communist state, nor is he likely to be among the architects of a united Germany. He will, however, retain his ability for getting to the right place at the right time, thereby perpetuating his own legend and, if we’re lucky, finding the opportunity to make some terrific music along the way.

The historical reference is to the maestro’s Dec. 23, 1989, performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the West Berlin Philharmonie hall, “a celebration of human freedom” (the conductor’s words), marking the symbolic tumbling of the Berlin Wall.

Two days later--Christmas--a repeat performance was given in the suddenly accessible East Berlin Schauspielhaus and captured (to no one’s surprise) for posterity by the TV cameras and Deutsche Grammophon’s recording microphones.

The emotion-laden event enlisted the services of a hastily assembled musical mass whose players and singers were brought to Berlin by plane, train, automobile and bus from New York, Leningrad, Munich (members of its Bavarian Radio Symphony provide the orchestral bulk), Dresden, London and Paris, and perhaps from just around the corner.

This scratched-together performance (on CD 429 861) should not be judged by rigid critical standards, but rather viewed as a from-the-heart, to-the-heart event. It is gripping, and not only for its extramusical associations. To deny that Bernstein knows, feels and has a rare ability to communicate this score would be a judgment as ill-informed as it is cynical. There can be advantages to having insufficient rehearsal time and little opportunity to “interpret” a hyper-familiar work, most notably when the leader is an inspirational force and those under his command are both willing and able and the audience is primed.

Perhaps the production would pack an even greater emotional wallop if there hadn’t already been so many grandly emotional moments in Bernstein’s life. And there is an element of hokum in the conductor’s insistence that the word Freiheit (freedom) be substituted in the finale, however inappropriately it may relate to Schiller’s poem, for Freude (joy). But this remains Beethoven’s Ninth, sometimes scrappy, always fresh, insistent and grand.

The decidedly mixed chorus (from East Berlin, Munich and Dresden) makes a thrillingly hearty noise, but the rough-and-barely-ready solo quartet is, with the exception of Jan-Hendrik Rootering’s clarion bass-baritone, rather a trial.

There are no dramatic extramusical events to explain away the new recording of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto by Bernstein, the Israel Philharmonic (whose playing is hardly cleaner and decidedly less lively than that of the Beethoven orchestra) and, as soloist, ex-Soviet cellist Mischa Maisky (Deutsche Grammophon 427 347).

It is a tortured, wildly overinterpreted, agonizingly slow affair. Worse, there are hardly a dozen consecutive measures of sustained tempo. Bernstein finds it necessary continually to isolate phrases and pull them apart, thereby ruling out momentum and rhythmic tension.

Cellist Maisky is another extravagantly gifted, decidedly willful artist, who goes neither Bernstein’s way nor Dvorak’s, but rather his own, and with less than consistent precision.

If, however, the woozy exoticism of Bloch’s “Schelomo”--the coupling--appeals, be informed that Bernstein and Maisky play it relatively straight.

But there’s another new release from Bernstein, a pairing of Sibelius’ Fifth and Seventh Symphonies (Deutsche Grammophon 427 647) so superbly accomplished, so apt and touching that any of the aforementioned transgressions become insignificant.

In music that tempts lesser men to Himalayan heights of self-indulgence, the most self-indulgent of conductors is totally in the composer’s service. These deeply pondered-- tempos in the Fifth are slow, but the requisite tension is ever-present-- and passionate performances are shaped, rather than hauled about, and executed with a depth and lusciousness of tone that is unique to the Vienna Philharmonic when Bernstein is on the podium.

Compulsory listening for anyone interested in the art of Sibelius--and the art of conducting.