Lessons by Lennie
Lennie Bernstein sat at the piano, cheerfully surveyed the recesses of Carnegie Hall and opened his mouth to sing:
Where, oh where are the pea-green
freshmen? . . . Safe at last in the sophomore class.
On that improbable note, the once-sedate New York Philharmonic last week launched its nyth season. In effect, Lennie was trying to bring the program notes to life, using the technique that he made familiar on his Omnibus music-appreciation series. His explanation: "How many times have you sat there and had a new piece of music thrown at you by Theocritus Schwartz or John Foster Doe and longed for something that would bring the piece closer to you?"
Most of Bernstein's attention last week was focused on Charles Ives's Symphony
No. 2 (the program also included Berlioz, Beethoven, William Schuman). After a lengthy lecture, Teacher Bernstein, microphone clipped to his dress shirt, played a few snatches of the American songs that Composer Ives stitched into his symphony (including, in addition to the pea-green freshmen, America the Beautiful, Camptown Races, Turkey in the Straw). Then, turning to his orchestra, Bernstein whipped it through a fine performance, his hips swaying, his arms flinging wide in a characteristic expression of musical frenzy. A youthful work (1897-1901) by Connecticut's late, largely self-taught Modernist Ives (an insurance broker most of his active life), the symphony was, as Lennie remarked, "original, eccentric, naive and as full of charm as an old lace valentine." With his own special mixture of eloquence, charm and ham, Bernstein thus gave the Philharmonic an excitement that it has not known in years (he will give the talks only at the Thursday-night "previews"). Broadway Librettist Adolph Green put it most succinctly when he saw Bernstein backstage after the performance, stripped to the waist and being massaged by his wife. "Atta boy, Sugar," said Green. "You fought a good fight."
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