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orman Lebrecht has said of Leonard Bernstein: "he was sensual and cerebral, moralistic and hedonistic, humble and vain, American and cosmopolitan, affectionate and narcissistic. He exhibited an 'intense love for life and disgust for life,' a dichotomy he attributed to Mahler," with whose output he recognized in various ways having felt a "direct contact." These are not just words. His recordings of the nine symphonies (plus the Adagio from the unfinished Tenth and the song cycles) are sensational, both the first complete set with the New York Philharmonic and his mature versions. Even more forceful and nuanced versions, leading different orchestras, but with the common denominator of an unequivocally passionate rigor.
"Mahler did not get to conduct the Ninth in his lifetime. He composed this symphony for me"Such empathy is confirmed by a statement Bernstein shared with his close friends: "The ninthhe did not get to conduct it in life. He composed this symphony for me." With a very different disposition -less bombastic, but no less significant- he wanted to introduce the work of this visionary to the general public, specifically in the chapter "Who is Gustav Mahler?" of the seriesYoung People's Concert, in 1960. It may sound strange, nowadays, but the fact is that at that time the Austro-Hungarian composer was far from popular (as revealed, moreover, by the small number of LP recordings, compared to Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and even other composers who tend to be considered less relevant).
GLENN GOULD, THE ENFANT TERRIBLE
The Canadian prodigy, himself with a reputation for eccentricity even if his friend Bruno Monsaingeon recently parodied that qualification (dwelled on it, in his excellent book No, I am not at all an eccentric, ed. Acantilado), participated with Bernstein in 1957 in a recording for Columbia, a pioneering record label, responsible for his groundbreaking Goldberg Variations, in 1955, and in the jazz realm for the appearance of sonic monuments like Miles Davis's Kind of Blue or Charles Mingus's Ah Um. With full knowledge of the facts, therefore, Bernstein would host Gould three years later within the framework of one of his television programs, in which he offered the interpretation of a movement from the same concerto recorded on that LP, the Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052, by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Before, thanks to his masterful eloquence, Bernstein introduces the piece: he explains that Bach left no dynamic indications for the interpretation - something common at the time - which today demands a creative but rigorous intervention, not without criteria, on the part of the pianist. Bernstein, on the occasion, takes for granted that what is in the score could not be played as is, as it would sound too dull ("that's unutterable dull"), and illustrates it by comparing it to a work like Hamlet. A play with not many more indications from Shakespeare than the mention of the setting - Elsinore, in Denmark - and the interventions of the characters; but not how to declaim or stage the situations, the costumes, the physical conditions of the protagonists, etc.; that is, what pertains to the interpretation, properly speaking. It is about elaborating it with coherence - even if it can never be positively determined, rigidly and definitively - after a complete and careful reading of the text, through the study of the author's circumstances and the culture of the time.
Interpretation requires analytical capacity but also a dose of creativity, as it involves the recreation of a reality that, in a certain way, has never taken place (at least not for us, as readers or interpreters of another space-time). "This is exactly our situation with Bach. (...) We must study all the work, know his ideas and then draw our conclusions. Thus, Glenn Gould must decide and I, as his accompanist, must also decide with him all kinds of questions of tempo and phrasing, and everything we deem necessary to convey to the listener the musical meaning most deeply akin to Bach." Bernstein goes on to show, conducting the orchestra, two interpretative modes that he considers extreme, one romantic and majestic, the other vivid, more varied; he states that the optimal result probably lies between the two illustrated styles ("in between"), one with well-marked inflections and the other - the first - which he describes as substantial. Clearly, however, he takes a stand in relation to the soloist's idiosyncrasy: "in any case, what will not happen - if I know Mr. Gould well - is a bland, literal reading of the notes".
The result of that entente is captured in the video; each one may judge, to the extent that the sound recording -quite regular- allows. We will surely agree that the version edited years ago by Columbia is more consistent. However, the more polite Bernstein, the one who seduces through the screen, seems to have agreed with the soloist -without too many belligerences, a priori- on a common ground for the interpretative matter. Nevertheless, the agreement between interpreter and conductor -here, again, Gould and Bernstein- is not always reached, as the latter demonstrates in a speech prior to the performance of Johannes Brahms's Concerto in D minor on April 6, 1962, when he specifies the heterodoxy of his piano reading in terms of tempi and dynamics, that is, regarding the rhythmic aspects and the intonation of the pulsations. "Which brings up an interesting question: 'what am I doing conducting the concerto?' I conduct it, because Mr. Gould is such a valuable and serious artist, that I must take seriously everything he conceives in good faith, especially feeling that his conception is interesting enough for you to hear it." The matter does not end here, and in fact, for the complete intervention, an entry has even been created in the most consulted online dictionary.
"Only once in my life, before, had I to submit to the completely new and incompatible vision of an artist... and that was the last time I accompanied Mr. Gould"The intervention, finally, incorporates a joke that provoked a burst of laughter in the audience: "Only once in my life, before, had I to submit to the completely new and incompatible vision of an artist... and that was the last time I accompanied Mr. Gould." Instead of causing a scandal, Bernstein agrees to perform his task in the best way, citing the spirit of adventure -that "sporting element" inherent in interpretation, as Dimitri Mitropoulos conveyed to him- as well as the quality and interpretative depth of Glenn Gould: "we can all learn something from this extraordinary artist, who is a thoughtful interpreter." The issue with which we must close this triptych dedicated to Bernstein's artistic personality lies precisely in that element of search, which requires effort even in the best composers of the past converted into classics, whom he unreservedly calls "geniuses."
CODA WITH BEETHOVEN: THE "PRINCIPLE OF INEVITABILITY"
Let's return, to close, to the beginning of our triptych, that is, to the reflections in The Joy of Music in which Bernstein paradoxically recognized himself compelled to speak and explain a magic that words, concepts, absolutely fail to communicate: pleasure is experienced in the course of musical performance thanks to a mathematical alchemy, in which rationality necessarily intervenes without -however- being able to explain the springs of the soul, irrational or spiritual, that it sets in motion. Hence the need to find metaphors or images -even if doomed to failure ("doomed")- to explain the affection and the awakening of emotions that music generates. Bernstein dedicates a televised talk to a seminal work like Beethoven's Fifth, and his eloquence again shines through when he focuses on the famous opening theme, which we can all hum. "People have wondered for years what it is that endows this musical figure with such power. All sorts of fantastic theories of musical appreciation have been suggested: that it is based on a bird's song that Beethoven heard in the forests of Vienna; that it is fate knocking at the door; that it is trumpets announcing the Last Judgment." The diversity of appreciations of such rich, such potentially significant music, is captured in its insane extreme in Stanley Kubrick's celebrated film A Clockwork Orange, in which the protagonist expresses his devotion to Beethoven. It is not, obviously, the only cinematographic work in which his music collaborates with fiction.
None of that is universally valid; no argument or subplot can pinpoint the meaning of the composition, and more specifically, of the opening theme. Much more prosaic, and at the same time complex, is the answer offered by Bernstein: "the truth is that the true meaning lies in the notes that follow it," inasmuch as they are not, at all, self-evident. The composer's effort is titanic, even in the case of a Beethoven, against the romantic myth (or, rather, Mozartian) that suggests melodies spring spontaneously from the creator's mind, as if they had always been there, in a state of celestial pre-existence. Bernstein recalls that Beethoven rejected dozens of pages of sketches, just for that first movement, some of whose alternatives he dissects and comments on by interpreting them at the piano or in front of an orchestra (on an LP that was marketed in the sixties and seventies). After all—he explains—it's not just about finding "the right notes, but also the right rhythms, the right climaxes, the right harmonies, the right instrumentation."
"The composer finally leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world (…), something that consistently follows its own laws, something we can trust and that will never let us down"The question of the meaning of music has transformed. For what is strange and marvelous is no longer just the discovery of the right theme, but the absolute stubbornness with which the artist searches the best possible developmentand, discarding endless possibilities, establishes it as if it were natural, until reaching what Bernstein calls the "principle of inevitability" (principle of inevitability). The key that unravels the mystery of the great artist lies in that "for reasons unknown to him and to anyone else, he gives away his energies and his life only to ensure that one note inevitably follows another. It seems a rather strange way to spend one's life; but it is not so strange when we think that the composer, in doing this, leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world, that something is moving forward steadily, something that follows its own laws consistently, something we can trust and that will never let us down."