“Bernstein’s Stravinsky performances include some of his most indelible recordings,” reads one of the hype blurbs on the back of Sony Classical’s new Bernstein Conducts Stravinsky box. However, the recordings contained therein at times seem to imply otherwise; occasionally they are “indelible” for less than flattering reasons, despite Bernstein’s (and Stravinsky’s) best intentions. Another blurb, this time from Bernstein himself, proclaimed the Russian composer “the last great father-figure of Western music”: An ambiguous remark in the face of the conductor’s own difficult relationships with father-figures, to say nothing of his perceived failure at becoming one himself (at least as a composer).
The six, fairly short, LP-length CDs in the box alone speak of Bernstein’s sincere but guarded appreciation of Stravinsky. As expected, the big three early ballets are all represented (The Rite of Spring appears twice). Missing, however, are any works from the final four decades of Stravinsky’s life, a period of restless and often surprising stylistic turns which produced some of the finest works to flow from his custom-built nib. From 1947 on his amanuensis Robert Craft would turn him on to a wide array of interests, including early music and Webern. Unsurprisingly, given Bernstein’s well-known (and wrong-headed) aversion to Schoenberg and his successors, none of the late kinetic late serial scores are heard here. (Although he did appear uncredited conducting a section from Stravinsky’s The Flood in the composer’s recording for Columbia.) The most recent score included in this set is the Symphony of Psalms, composed nine years prior to the composer’s emigration to America in 1939 and 41 years before his death in Manhattan in 1971.
To say that Stravinsky was, for his part, sometimes no less guarded of Bernstein's efforts on his behalf is putting it mildly. Stravinsky’s first encounter with the then up-and-coming maestro, at a Hollywood Bowl performance of the suite from The Firebird, was not auspicious—both he and his wife left disappointed. A few years later, during a performance of Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety under the direction of the composer in Venice, Stravinsky bolted out of his seat and headed right out the doors of La Fenice after only a few minutes.
Of the first disc which opens this set, comprising The Soldier’s Tale and the Octet, Stravinsky acidly confided to Craft that he was “praying those records are never published.” Made early in his career with members of the Boston Symphony, Bernstein’s readings are softer-edge than one would expect, forecasting his later approach to other Stravinsky works. Beautifully pastel-colored though they are, they also evince unease with their brittle textures and expressive dryness. Almost as if Bernstein had attempted to stuff Stravinsky into an ill-fitting costume sewn together from the respective wardrobes of Brahms and Debussy. The results are especially surprising (and Stravinsky’s irritation understandable) with The Soldier’s Tale, a work whose tart harmonies and proto-jazz rhythms would seem ideal for the young Bernstein.
The second and fifth discs both include Bernstein’s justifiably renowned recordings of The Rite of Spring, from 1958 and 1972 with the New York Philharmonic and London Symphony respectively. Even Stravinsky, for once, generally approved of the results, at least of the former. (He had been dead for a few months by the time of the recording sessions for the latter.) Unlike many of the conductors who had recorded Stravinsky’s most famous score prior to him, Bernstein was among the first generation of conductors for whom The Rite of Spring had been an established fixture of their musical history. From the strained, falsetto opening notes of the solo bassoon to the final bludgeoning tutti, Bernstein is all unflagging swagger; with orchestra and conductor streaking before the listener like blazing rockets. Of the two recordings, the edge of danger is sharper and more menacing in the earlier, its blade digging into the flesh deeper thanks to the unanimity of purpose of both orchestra and conductor. The later English recording sounds better (it was originally mastered for quadraphonic sound), downright lush at times but the orchestra sounding less committed to Bernstein’s feverish vision.
As fine as those recordings are, however, it is in the splashy and exuberant second of the big Ballets Russes scores where Bernstein seems most in his element. His reading of Petrushka (1947 version) is alight with that joyous flash which makes Bernstein at his best so compelling. Throughout he charismatically conveys a sense of wide-eyed wonder over the pratfalls, side-slips, and unexpected pathos in Stravinsky’s panoramic musical description of the eponymous doomed puppet, whose antics bubble up as if within a dream amidst the revelry of a pre-revolutionary Russia; itself a doomed dream which, only a few years after the ballet’s premiere, would collapse into nightmare.
Less successful is the disc containing the Concerto for Piano and Wind Orchestra and the suite from Pulcinella. The latter is colorful enough, although Bernstein misses a lot of the mordant irony of the music, inadvertently making it a spiritual companion to the genial nostalgia of Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances and Tommasini’s The Good-Natured Ladies. At first anyway, Stravinskian neoclassicism was not so much return and renewal of tradition as it was subversive commentary upon it; which furthermore made clear that not only was going “back to Bach” futile, but that those forms had already been exhausted by repeated use and their own accrued cultural baggage.
Seymour Lipkin joins Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in the Concerto but the conductor’s tendency to foist a Papa Brahms beard upon Stravinsky resurges. Lipkin’s passagework, especially in the finale, sounds muddy; the direction from the podium reticent, as if prudish embarrassment kept the conductor from embracing the music’s Roaring ‘20s insouciance. Better but still not ideal is Bernstein’s recording of the Symphony of Psalms, although it is still heavier and more legato than the best recordings (starting with the composer’s own with a pick-up ensemble consisting mostly of an earlier iteration of Bernstein’s band, also available on Sony Classical).
Preceding the Symphony of Psalms on disc 6 is Bernstein’s Boston Symphony recording of Oedipus Rex. Simply put: It is unbeatable. While Stravinsky may have intended for action in this opera to unfurl impassively, the characters treated as singing statues, Bernstein was having none of that. Rather than a “tragedy” encased within ironic commas, the conductor casts them off. Bernstein’s interpretation is unapologetically, compellingly emotional, even sensual. No other conductor better delivers the majesty and latent terror in Creon’s aria or in the “Gloria” choruses which divide the work. When the snare of destiny finally snags Oedipus, Bernstein drives the closing, tarantella-like chorus straight into the depths of Hades; leaving one’s speakers practically reeking of sulphur. His cast is uniformly superb. René Kollo’s Oedipus is simultaneously heroic, moving, and weak-willed; deftly conveying the character’s vainglorious denialism, only to despair when he realizes too late that the game is up. His Jocasta, Tatyana Troyanos, is regal and alluring. No marble statue she, but a flesh and blood woman right out of Verdi. Tom Krause is rich-toned, playing up Creon as a well-meaning Grand Inquisitor determined to raze Thebes and the whole of Earth in search of the truth.
Listening to these recordings one gets the impression of hearing Bernstein grapple no-holds barred with Stravinsky, with the latter occasionally eluding the conductor’s grasp. If not the last word in Stravinskian interpretation, they are fascinating documents nonetheless (and in the case of Petrushka, The Rite of Spring, and Oedipus Rex essential). Stravinsky and Bernstein completists will have likely already acquired this set by the time I finish this review. Others would do well to acquaint themselves first with other recordings, especially those by the composer himself, before committing to Bernstein’s idiosyncratic but devoted Stravinsky.
