A MAN OF TWO MINDS

Was Bernstein a great symphonic composer, or a Broadway giant? Both!
And that calls for a festival.

By John Longenbaugh

Why create a Seattle Arts Festival around Leonard Bernstein? The best reason: he contained multitudes. "With composers, I say I am a conductor," he said in 1956. "With conductors, I say I am a composer." Two kinds of composer, in fact -- a colossus with one foot planted in the symphonic world and the other on Broadway. After a speedy rise to assistant conductor at the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein took the podium on November 13, 1943, when conductor Bruno Walker took ill. Despite no time for rehearsal, the concert was an artistic triumph, and like a chorine thrust into the spotlight, the 25-year-old conductor found himself an overnight star. He went on to lead the great orchestras of Vienna, London, and Israel, and re-imagined the role of conductor for the modern age.

Virtually simultaneously, Bernstein's star rose as a composer on Broadway. After scoring Jerome Robbins' 1944 ballet Fancy Free, he collaborated with Robbins and writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green on a musical about three sailors on 24-hour shore leave in New York. On the Town ran for 462 performances, followed by his 1953 Broadway smash Wonderful Town. You can see On the Town in a rare fully-staged production at The 5th Avenue Theatre in association with Spectrum Dance Theatre April 11-May 2 and in its MGM film version at SIFF on May 23, and on June 18, Lake Union Civic Orchestra presents three Dance Episodes from the show.

Throughout his career he continued to return to the stage for musicals as well as incidental music for plays. Festival-goers will have a chance to hear selections from some of his lesser-known stage works, including Peter Pan and The Madwoman of Central Park West as part of Master Chorus Eastside's Bernstein on Broadway Concert on March 14, and The Lark at Orchestra Seattle/Seattle Chamber Singers on June 6. And The 5th Avenue will stage another Bernstein masterwork when the legendary musical Candide is given its Seattle premiere May 25-June 13.

Of course, his 1957 musical masterpiece West Side Story is for the ages—a once-in-a-century collaboration of geniuses including Robbins, Arthur Laurents, and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. The magnificent musical has a significant presence in the Festival, including "Symphonic Dances" from the show by the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra on February 28, the film version at SIFF June 6, and a unique musical conversation with original Jet Martin Charnin about Bernstein and the show at Seattle Theatre Group (co-produced with Showtunes) on June 7. And honoring both Bernstein and Sondheim, The Seattle Men's Chorus and Seattle Women's Chorus combine to celebrate their works with Glitter and Be Gay on June 6, 13, 20 and 25.

Bernstein's contribution to film will be honored with a special viewing of the Marlon Brando classic On the Waterfront, featuring Bernstein's score and introduced by his daughter Jamie Bernstein, at SIFF on May 30.

While lighting up Broadway with these and other popular works, Bernstein also composed symphonies, operas, serenades, and choral music notable for their unabashed melody and tonality at a time when many were turning to more abstract forms. You can experience his lyrical and thematic diversity at performances including Seattle Symphony's Season Finale: A Bernstein Celebration June 24-27, which will include The Chichester Psalms and Symphony No. 2, The Age of Anxiety, with pianist Misha Dichter.

Bernstein was also a genius of education, "the ideal explainer of music, both past and present," as Virgil Thomson said. His celebrated CBS Young People's Concerts (1958- 73) won nine Emmys; demonstrating the sonata form, for example, Bernstein once sang Lennon/McCartney's "And I Love Her." (Seattle Symphony and the Cascade Youth Symphony pay tribute with "A Tribute to Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts" on May 8.)

Some called his easy embrace of jazz and pop superficial. Even late in his career, some critics claimed his conducting was too theatrical — while critics of his musicals felt the works were too deliberately high-minded and serious. You can't win when you're a genius twice over. Yet his vigorous cross-pollination of musical forms lent vitality to each.

Bernstein's career was an unending accumulation of new challenges, passions and causes, sometimes controversial: nuclear disarmament, Vietnam protest. "He never understood why what he saw as clear common sense and human decency wasn't accepted by everybody else," said his brother Burton.

Like a select few other American geniuses (Frank Lloyd Wright, Duke Ellington), Bernstein produced at a tremendous rate well into old age. Since his death, critical opinion has shifted in favor of such once-scorned late-career pieces as Mass (with its mixture of music pop and sacred, symphonic and bluesy). We are just now beginning to catch up to Bernstein's achievement.

Bernstein died on October 14,1990, just days after he retired from conducting. For generations of Americans, he'd not only been a composer and conductor nonpareil, but a trusted educator, defying expectations that symphonic music was highbrow, beyond the enjoyment of the common taste.

It's a shame that Bernstein couldn't have lived into the internet age. He had already conquered radio and TV—what could he have made of streaming video and social media?

Boundlessly energetic, relentlessly curious, and unshakably himself, Bernstein's multiplicity of talents and interests makes him the perfect subject for this citywide Festival. Ever a man to enjoy a great party, Leonard Bernstein would have probably been as thrilled to celebrate with us as we're excited to celebrate with him.