Bernstein’s Vibrant New York

Like a lot of people, I was drawn to New York, where I lived in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, in part because of Leonard Bernstein. I didn’t move there with any illusions that Bernstein would be contributing much to the life of the city any more; his presence was still felt locally, but the world had become his arena. I went, instead, because of the glamorous, life-affirming, anything-is-possible, ever-so-sentimental image of New York Bernstein had painted through his Broadway scores of the ‘40s and ‘50s. His music evoked a city in which, it seemed, people lived life more fully than anywhere else.

I never knew that New York. There were only fleeting glimpses of it by the time I arrived. And now one looks for it almost in vain, as Disney makes a theme park out of Times Square, as Trump builds again, as New Yorkers act angrier, ruder and more intolerant than ever, as AIDS and shallow government pockets damage the arts. Perhaps that’s why, six years after his death, Bernstein’s evocations of a more vibrant time have become so haunting, and why several recordings of this music have suddenly appeared.

The most aggressive in reminding us of an era gone by is “Leonard Bernstein’s New York,” just out from Nonesuch. First there is the gorgeous photo of a young Lenny on the cardboard sleeve. Then, inside, a glossy black-and-white photo of a crowded Times Square on a rainy night, taken around the time Broadway was galvanized by “West Side Story,” spills over from the back of the booklet and onto the plastic case, a symbol of the unstoppable energy of the place.

This CD has all the makings of a crossover hit. It headlines the irresistible Dawn Upshaw and the irrepressible Mandy Patinkin, along with other lesser-known but impressive Broadway singers. Eric Stern, in whose veins Bernsteinian blood seems to run, conducts the versatile Orchestra of St. Luke’s. The production values, and especially the recorded sound, are splendid. Frank Rich wrote the bright liner notes.

But the release, fine as it is, paints Bernstein as pure, unadulterated Broadway--no updating, no nostalgia and, heaven forbid, no classicizing. But, in fact, Bernstein is too complicated and too messy for this cool, collected, corporate-’90s treatment. His popular music is full of art-song sophistications and showmanship, of great emotional swings and compositional gamesmanship, which is why it does such a great job in painting New York as a town of glitz and substance. It requires singers with real technique and the common touch.

In trying so hard to get it so right, the Nonesuch compilation has a strange impersonality. Upshaw, an opera singer with a pop singer’s direct diction, is admirable, of course, and were she used more, it might have made for a better disc. Patinkin delivers less emotion than his throbbing vibrato and police-siren high notes promise, and response to him is always a personal matter. But throughout the recording, one senses a Bernstein just a little bit too put together.

Still, it avoids false steps, and that is something to be grateful for in the face of much of its competition, especially the stupidities found on the pop compilation disc “The Songs of West Side Story,” that BMG released earlier this year. Just compare Upshaw’s collected, professional version of “Somewhere” with those of an over-the-hill, over-the-top Aretha Franklin or an undernourished Phil Collins. No complaints, however, about Little Richard’s campy version of “I Feel Pretty”--Bernstein undoubtedly would have loved that.

A newer BMG Bernstein collection, “A Simple Song,” with Harolyn Blackwell, makes a stab at finding the right balance between high and pop art. Blackwell, who has a natural ability to move between Broadway and opera, gives the songs a certain juice that they can use, but she is hampered by the selection. Many of the choices are lesser Bernstein, such as the fey, early song cycle “I Hate Music,” or the contrived nostalgia of the almost-forgotten early ‘50s show “Peter Pan.” And everything is over-arranged by Danny Troob. But the duets from “West Side Story”--with, believe it or not, Vanessa Williams--are surprisingly personable.

Out of all the recent Bernstein releases, it is Michael Tilson Thomas’ that best gets at the complex, conflicted heart of the man and makes him most applicable to our own troubled times. The disc, from Deutsche Grammophon, features Bernstein’s last work, the song-cycle “Arias and Barcarolles.” A curious piece, at once a sentimental swan song and a still-defiant look at life and God, it is deliciously sung by Thomas Hampson and Frederica von Stade.

Also on this recording, which features the London Symphony, are the suite from Bernstein’s problematic opera “A Quiet Place” and the symphonic dances from “West Side Story.” Both are rich performances.

Tilson Thomas understands probably better than anyone else, and maybe better than Bernstein did himself, that the popular and classical sides of the composer were not separate, as was long the conventional wisdom. Both kinds of works contain the same romantic gestures, the same effusiveness, the same love for the world and the same searching for something mystical. Tilson Thomas conducts the “West Side Story” dances as if they were simultaneously swing music and music of great shamanistic transcendence.

In the end, the dances, like the rest of the music on this disc, don’t so much represent the specific New York of the ‘50s as they do the realm of great art, a realm beyond time and place, a realm that neither Trump nor budget cuts nor bad manners can destroy. With this disc, Bernstein’s “Somewhere” has finally found its place, and American art has something else to be proud of.