Leonard Bernstein, Uma ponte entre a Sinagoga e Broadway.

"A música é a linguagem mais profunda do homem"

(Tradução do website espritsnomades)

A partir de um romance de Albert Cohen, Leonard Bernstein poderíamos dizer que é um dos magníficos. Grande maestro, educador extraordinário, porque ele tinha uma paixão pela educação, compositor emocionante, ele representa a apoteose do judaísmo nova-yorkino junto com Woody Allen. Sua obra faz uma ponte entre a Broadway e a sinagoga! Ele sempre se espelhou em Mahler. Como ele, regente para garantir o seu sustento, como ele, judeu exilado no meio das nações, como ele um compositor de veraneio. Ele teria consagrado grande parte da sua vida para revelar Mahler aos Americanos e ao mundo. Pouco interpretado na sua época, 1960, se não fosse por Bruno Walter, foi Lenny que empreendeu a gravação da sua obra integral em disco.

Ele faz uma segunda gravação mais recente nos anos 1980. Para quem quer mergulhar de cabeça no universo de Mahler, Bernstein é a melhor opção. Exessivo, exuberante, romântico transbordante e ardente, ele se aproxima do seu mestre. Foi através dele que eu descobri bastante sinfonias. Ele se superava em Sibelius, Chostakovich e Haydn, Charles Ives e sobretudo seu ídolo e sua paixão Copland. Ele nos deixou centenas de discos das suas gravações.

In English at the Rolling Stone Magazine...

LEONARD BERNSTEIN

A Rolling Stone Interview (part of it), by Jonathan Cott, November 29, 1990

You once said: "I am a fanatic music lover. I car't live one day without hearíng music, playing it, studying it or thinking about it." When did this obbsession begins?

The day in 1928 that my aunt Clara, who was in the process of moving, dumped a sofa on my family — I was ten years old at the time — along with an old upright piano, which, I still remember, had a mandolin pedal: The middle pedal turned the instrument into a kind of wrinkly sounding mandolin. And Ijust put my hands on the keyboard and I was hooked . . . for life. You know what it's like to fall in love: You touch someone and that 's it. From that day to is, that 's what my life 's been about.

At first, I started teaching myself the piano and invented my own system of harmony. But then I demanded, and got, piano lessons, at a buck a lesson, from one of our neighbor's daughters — a Miss Karp. Frieda Karp. I adored her, I was madly in love with her. She taught me beginner's pieces like "The Mountain Belle." And everything went along fine until I began to play — probably very badly — compositions that she couldn't. Miss Karp could't keep up with my Chopin Ballades. So she told my father that I should be sent to the New England Conservatory of Music. And was taught by a Miss Susan Williams, who charged three an hour. And now my father started to complain: "A klezmer want to be?" To him, a klezmer [an itinerant musician in Easa Europe who played at weddings and bar mitzvahs] was little more than a beggar.

You see, until that time, neither my father [who was in the beauty supply business] nor I really knew that there was a real "world of music." I remember his taking me when I was fourteen years old to a Boston Pops concert, a benefit for our synagogue, where I fell in love with Ravel's Bolero, and several months later to a piano recital by Sergei Rachmaninoff—both at Symphony Hall. And my father was just as astonished as I was to see thousands of people paying to hear one person play the piano!

But still he balked at three-dollar lessons for me. One dollar for the lessons and quarter-a-week allowance—that's ali he allotted for my music. So, I started to play in a little jazz group, and we performed at... weddings and bar mitzvahs! [Laughs] Klezmers! The sax player in our group had access to stock arrangements for Louis Blues," "Deep Night" and lots of Irving Berlin songs; and

l'd come home at night with bleeding fingers and two bucks, maybe which went toward my piano lessons.

Now, my new teacher, Miss Williams, didn't work out—she had some kind of system, based on never showing your knuckles. Can you imagine playing a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody like that? So I found another teacher... at six dollars an hour... and therefore I had to play more jazz, and I also started to give piano lessons to the neighborhood kids.

Meanwhile, I was going to Hebrew school after regular school and the temple we belonged to [Temple Mishkan Tefila] also introduced me to live music. There was an organ, a sweet-voiced cantor and a choir led by a fantastic man named Professor Solomon Braslavsky from Vienna, who composed liturgical composit that were so grand and oratorio-like—very much influenced Mendelssohn's Elijah, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and even Mahler.

And I used to weep just listening to the choir, cantor and organ thundering out—it was a big influence on me. I realized, many years later, that the "gang call" — the way the Jets signal to each other in West Side Story was really like the call of the shofar that I used to hear blown in temple on Rosh Hashanah.

En Français, transcrit du site espritsnomades.

« La musique est le langage le plus profond de l’homme »

Comme issu d’un roman d’Albert Cohen on pourrait dire de Leonard Bernstein qu’il est un des magnifiques. Génial chef d’orchestre, pédagogue extraordinaire car il avait une passion pour l’éducation, compositeur émouvant il représente l’apothéose du judaïsme new-yorkais avec Woody Allen. Son œuvre fait le pont entre la synagogue et Broadway !

Il s’est toujours pris pour Mahler. Comme lui chef d’orchestre pour gagner sa vie, comme lui juif exilé au milieu des nations, comme lui compositeur d’été. Il aura consacré une grande partie de savie à faire découvrir Mahler aux Américains et au monde. A peine joué à son époque, 1960, si ce n’est par Bruno Walter, c’est Lenny qui a entrepris la première intégrale au disque de l’œuvre entière.

Il en fera même une deuxième plus récente dans les années 1980. À qui veut entrer de plain-pied dans l’univers complexe de Mahler Bernstein reste la meilleure approche. Excessif, survolté, romantique débordant et ardent il se rapproche de son maître. C’est par lui que j’ai découvert bien des symphonies. Il excellait aussi dans Sibélius, Chostakovitch et Haydn, Charles Ives et surtout son idole et sa passion Copland. Il nous reste des centaines de disques de ses enregistrements.

Qui l'a vu diriger, danseur sur son estrade, Peter Pan de la musique, ne l’oubliera jamais. Tant étaient grande son extase, son exubérance folle, qu’il exultait sur scène. Plus de 500 CD, des DVD, des films, gardent intacte sa fougue et sa mémoire. Bien avant tout le monde il avait compris le poids de la télévision et savait l’utiliser. Fulgurant il aura marqué son siècle, dont il comprenait les contradictions, les portant en lui.

West Side Story; studio takes.