Antonio Pappano - Bernstein: Symphonies Nos 1-3 – Prelude, Fugue & Riffs (2018) [Hi-Res]

Warner Classics is honouring Bernstein with live recordings, made in Rome in February 2018, of his three symphonies and his Prelude, Fugue and Riffs. Sir Antonio Pappano conducts the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the soloists are pianist Beatrice Rana, mezzo-soprano Marie-Nicole Lemieux, soprano Nadine Sierra and narrator Dame Josephine Barstow. Bernstein, who died in 1990, was one of the defining forces in 20th-century music, not only as the first great American-born conductor and as a charismatic communicator, but as a composer who represents the cultural ‘melting pot’ of the USA.

His three symphonies are: No 1, ‘Jeremiah’, premiered in 1944; No 2, ‘The Age of Anxiety’ (1949) and No 3, ‘Kaddish’ (1963). They show Bernstein assimilating a diversity of influences, such as the composers Mahler, Shostakovich and Aaron Copland (Bernstein’s American-born mentor), jazz and Latin music (idioms which are driving forces in West Side Story, his all-conquering Broadway musical of 1961), his Jewish heritage.

Bernstein had a long association with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He first conducted the orchestra in 1948 and from 1983 to 1990 served as its Honorary President. Sir Antonio Pappano, who has been music director of the Roman ensemble since 2005, was born in England but spent his formative years in the USA. At the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts he watched Bernstein teaching young conductors and later, in the mid-1980s, met the great maestro, who was interviewing potential musical assistants for a recording project with the Accademia di Santa Cecilia.

“I find these symphonies revelatory in the true sense of the word,” says Pappano. “They are hugely emotive and personal … At heart, Lenny was filled with the desire for the brotherhood of man to be something real and concrete … As a great Renaissance man, he was trying to make the world good.”

"Still not well known, these works are widely contrasting in style and far from the Bernstein of West Side Story...[Kaddish is] where Pappano and his top-notch orchestra are particularly successful. With Josephine Barstow as narrator and a crisp, committed performance from the musicians, the work loses that old tendency to embarrass, and gains a natural dignity and joy. This is an invaluable set for anyone wanting to know more of Bernstein’s concert works." (The Observer)

Nadine Serra, soprano
Marie-Nicole Lemieux, mezzo-soprano
Beatrice Rana, piano
Dame Josephine Barstow, narrator
Alessandro Carbonare, clarinet
Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale Di Santa Cecilia
Sir Antonio Pappano, conductor