About CMO: Conductors Masterclass Online

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In my book Lenny & Me: On Conducting Bernstein’s Symphonies, I follow the musicologist Norman Del Mar's dictum that interpretation varies from conductor to conductor, but that writing down a roadmap might "provide a starting point for some budding conductor approaching one of these works for the first time."  

One caveat, and perhaps similar to others who were lucky to also study with Bernstein, is that I have conducted all his orchestral works. This masterclass experience offers a unique perspective. Being considered a “Bernsteinian" is, for me, as great a compliment as when having also been called a “Mahlerian.” Let us not forget that it was Bernstein's own Mahler cycle that now gives credibility to the term Mahlerian. Before that, Mahler's was a name recognized only to the privileged few. And like Mahler, Bernstein gives many indications to conductors in his works, while allowing the freedom to interpret, or "recompose," as Lenny would himself say. 

Del Mar's seminal book, Conducting Beethoven, and the others that followed on Brahms, Berlioz and other concert works, differentiate between the good and the great, between the core repertoire and the secondary. With my book and this masterclass on Bernstein's Symphonies, I hopeto put Bernstein in that same league of greatness where I believe he belongs.

Why? Because Lenny's music is unique, as was the man. While there are many examples of composer's lives being as splendiferous as his (or her) music, few have lived the life of Bernstein, in performance, composition, influence or education. Nor composed in such a variety of musical forms. Nor developed a voice that was absolutely American, nostalgic of New York, permeating with personality and fabulously flamboyant in opera, musical theater, concerti, vocal works, choral works, symphonies, overtures, film scores, and so on. Bernstein may have been good at everything, but he would have said he was best at writing for the theater, and all his works are, in some way, theatrical. Bernstein was the polyglot who absorbed notes, themes, ideas, languages, sounds, styles, philosophies, palindromes, images and words and combined them all together into a sonic soundscape of thick harmonies, light pastiche and soaring melodies that can be considered imitative at times and innovative at most others.

Bernstein might have done more with words for audience development than any other conductor because he was the first who spoke directly to his public, both in the concert hall and on television. Perhaps that is the best way to describe his music as well. It speaks directly to the listener. It is impossible not to move your head in rhythm when listening to the Mambo from West Side Story. It is impossible to not consider one's own love story when listening to the Serenade. It is impossible not to laugh during the Turkey Trot in the Divertimento. It is impossible to not reflect on humanity when listening to his Kaddish.

Lenny may not have believed he would be the subject of such a masterclass. He believed he was a more famous conductor than composer, and feared only being remembered for West Side Story. His identification with Mahler, as a misunderstood composer, and also a Jewish conductor, was logical. And yet, despite the hundreds of books about Bernstein, according to the Bernstein family, there has never been a book about conducting his music. It was the conductor, Lenny, from whom I learned. And so it is conducting Lenny that inspires me to share. But what also encouraged me to write this book is not only the quality and integrity of his great music, and the indelible

imprint of his personality, but also to remind the reader and the conductor of what we lost when Bernstein died: The permission to be good at everything. So he was. And so too can we be.

Thus, Lenny and Me: On Conducting Bernstein, is a detailed description of

conducting (and hearing) the varied orchestral compositions which are, I believe, good. To not give Bernstein my invested, authorial time would be to deny the teacher who gave so much of his to me. What I suggest from a conductor's perspective is always with Lenny the conductor/composer in mind. And to not make the effort to give Lenny his rightful place in the pantheon of great composers is to forget that he was a mirror to our own desperate efforts to be good. To be just. To be loved. The 20th century was all things to all people. Anxious yet enthusiastic. Traditional but innovative. Destructive yet fertile. Lenny found these themes in his music. He proudly put them on display on TV, on tours, in opera, in concerts. in books and in lectures. Lenny was a man of his time and for all time. As is his music.

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