Customer Reviews

Bernstein: A White House Cantata

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It's amazing that it took almost 25 years to get this much of "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" onto a CD. It's even more amazing to hear it again after all these years. I have a small association with the show, having been a member of the pit orchestra for its month-long tryout at the Forest Theater in Philadelphia. (Actually, the orchestra was so big that it would not fit into the pit, leaving conductor Roland Gagnon to conduct into a TV camera while we were behind a scrim at the back of the stage - on two levels - watching him on a monitor.)

The problems with the show always stemmed from the book, not the music. As I listen to the lyrics 25 years later, they seem a bit more clever than I remember. But you have to examine the mood of the country when this show premiered. In1976, we were just past the horror of Vietnam and into the period of "malaise," as President Carter called it. The country just wanted some time to chill out, and here comes this highly touted musical (Coca-Cola put up over a million dollars - a record for that time - in sponsorship money) full of messages about racial injustice. People wanted to tap their toes and have a good time. Alan Jay Lerner and Leonard Bernstein were not about to let them do that.

As I recall, Lerner was kind of a basket case during the rehearsals, sitting quietly, and wearing leather gloves. Bernstein was as flamboyant as the legends that followed him. Sid Ramin and Hershey Kay kept coming into the pit with little slips of paper each day. Each slip would have changes that were made the previous night, and they would tape them to our music.

The music for "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" is brilliant in spite of the lyrics. Music like this had never been heard in the theater. Again, remember that this was years before the opera-like scores of today's Broadway blockbusters. And the worst of Bernstein is a thousand times more sophisticated than the best of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Bernstein paid tribute in the score to Gustav Mahler. He shows glimpses of Sibelius, Copland and even Bernstein. When he writes a march, he pays tribute to the French composers known as "The Six," adding a "wrong" note or an extra eighth of a beat to let the listener know that his tongue is planted firmly in his cheek.

Now to this recording. Why do the geniuses at Amberson and Deutsche Grammophon insist on giving us opera singers for Bernstein's theatrical scores? Didn't they learn from their disaster with Jose Carreras on the "West Side Story" CD? Not that Thomas Hampson can't carry a tune. But the part was originally played by Ken Howard, an excellent actor who could deliver a song. Hampson is an excellent singer who can't. I'm sure there were lots of actor/singers who could have been hired to record this.

Kent Nagano does a reputable job with the score. While he takes "Ten Square Miles on the Potomac River" entirely too fast, he does show an insight into the music, particularly on "The Monroviad." The "Sonatina" comes off as a bad Gilbert and Sullivan patter song, full of embarrassingly trite lyrics. And while the music for the minstrel show is a clever parody of the past, the lyrics drag it down into a shameful mess.

The composer Ned Rorem called Leonard Bernstein "a sacred monster." He also contended that "the only valid criticism of a piece of music is another piece of music." Consider this: in the almost twenty-five years since "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" made its ill-fated premier, has there been one show, one piece of music, or one composer who could touch the quality of Bernstein's work for the Broadway stage?

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue played for 7 performances on Broadway in 1976. To say it had a troubled life is something of an understatement. But whatever other problems the show had, it at least had a wonderful score. And so does A White House Cantata, a concert recording of some of the music from the show. It's not exactly what was heard on Broadway, but rather a compilation of some of the best music from all the incarnations of the show. The music is almost completely superb, but the performances are often lacking--1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was musical THEATRE, and not enough of the theatre is in evidence here. "Duet for One," for example, is a brilliant song in which the present First Lady and the past First Lady quibble during the Inauguration, with the catch being they are both played by one actress! But that number, among others, don't play on this recording very well. I have to recommend it just for the magnificent music, but this recording simply doesn't capture the show itself very well.

I'll counter-intuitively start with the bottom line: this album is a delightful listen, and is necessary for serious fans of musical theatre as well as Bernstein admirers.

What precedes the bottom line, though, is less pleasant. This isn't a terribly theatrical recording -- DG chose to eschew singing actors (such as those who were so vibrant in the original production of this failed show) in favor of legitimate singers. Moreover, there is little dialogue preserved (though I admit that I would not like to see any songs omitted to make room for it). As a result, the score comes across much more strongly as music than as a representation of a theatrical event, and some of the lyrics aren't given their full due.

But it's still hard to dislike the album. June Anderson has been roundly criticized for her First Lady, but she's very good on all of the songs that don't require her to excel at comedy. The showstopper "Duet For One" does have such a requirement, but as it has already been brilliantly recorded by Judy Kaye, Anderson's botch job is less of a tragedy.

The other lead, Thomas Hampson, is a fine singer with real presence on his major numbers. Everyone else in the cast does well enough, and the technical elements of the recording are fine.

Back to the bottom line: the score sparkles, and it has been given exciting life by this cast. It isn't the recording we might have hoped to hear, but what we now have is priceless.

"A White House Cantata" is a vitally important piece of work. It is the only document we have of one of Broadway's most legendary flops (rivalled only by Irving Berlin's "Mr. President"), "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue." Bernstein and Lerner spent four years ('72-'76) working on the score and book, then obtained nearly a million dollars from Coca Cola to stage the show. The result? An unmitigated disaster for all involved. The reason? Lerner's characteristically convoluted, muddled book. The score and lyrics were almost universally praised.

Bernstein forbid a cast recording after "1600" closed following only seven performances on Broadway. Until now, only "Take Care of This House" obtained a life of its own; the rest of the score, though parts were later recycled by Bernstein in other pieces, languished unheard. Finally, someone has been interested enough to take approximately half of Bernstein's massive score and make an absolutely superb recording of it. "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" is, at last, available (albeit in a drastically abridged form) for those who might have been wondering what exactly the show was about.

The score is a masterpiece and this recording is first-rate. Though many reviewers have complained about the "operatic" performances on the disc, Bernstein set Lerner's lyrics in an operatic fashion. Lerner, a superb interpreter of his own songs, said numerous times that the songs in "1600" were the only ones he wasn't able to sing. The performances are magnificent, exactly as Bernstein intended for them to be sung. This wasn't written to be standard Broadway fare. Patricia Routledge, who played the First Ladies during the brief Broadway run, said she felt one of the show's flaws was that Lerner was trying to write another musical while Bernstein was writing a grand opera. She had a point.

The orchestrations (by Bernstein and two others) are superb, coloring the music to perfection. The conducting and vocals are fantastic, and if there is any doubt that "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," despite its confusing plot, was a major achievement (musically and lyrically), this recording should dispel that idea. Lerner's lyrics are witty, literate, by turns hilarious and poignant: a tremendous display of lyrical virtuosity. Bernstein's score contains some of the most vital, diverse and accomplished music of his career. No wonder the musical's failure was such a crushing blow to him; he had to have known how good the score was, and to have it lost after only seven performances was a shame.

"A White House Cantata" is a unique experience, and worth every penny of its price.

I agree with the less enthusiastic reviews above. 1600 Penn Ave has sort of become a cult flop and this recording doesn't seem to justify those who argue that it's a great lost score. What's presented here mostly sounds like a taffy pull. This recording should have included musical theatre performers--the type of people Alan Lerner wrote for in the first place. It's really unfair for anyone to judge Bernstein's work as superior to Lerner's here--especially since one can hardly hear the lyrics. The performers could use a lesson in comic timimg from someone really funny, say Al Gore. Bottom line is that this is for show or Bernstein fanatics only.

It was Thursday, May 6, 1976 and I was in New York for a business trip and what was to become my weekend of Broadway flops. Since, I was a last minute replacement on the trip; I hadn't made any plans for my free time, which meant I had to take my chances on the TKTS line. Thursday evening I got tickets to REX at the Lunt-Fontanne with Nichol Williamson and Glenn Close. Friday, I headed uptown to the Harkness to see Robert Morse in So, Long 174th Street. And Saturday evening, it was Pacific Overtures at the Winter Garden. REX was regrettable, Robert Morse was fun, and Pacific Overtures became one of my all-time favorites.

But it was the Saturday matinee of Bernstein's 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at the Mark Hellinger that I had to tell everyone about when I got back to Saint Louis. At the time I didn't realize that the show closed that day and that I was be one of the few people to actually get to see it. To be honest, except for Bernstein's music and some of the performances the show itself was totally forgettable. Sitting in the theater, I remember thinking that the show would really be better on the cast album.

So why couldn't I wait to tell everyone about it? Well, it was just one of those once in a lifetime theatrical experiences. The audience that day was sparse. It seemed like there were more performers on stage. Although I had a great seat...center orchestra with no one around me in all directions - I had a feeling that the producers had been giving tickets away on the street in an attempt to pad the house. In the left section there was a large Italian family group - grandma to babes in arms. In the middle of the first act mama opened a basket she had brought and began passing out plates of food to the family. The resulting melee attracted more attention than the performance on stage. Even the actors had to see what was happening. So, how could you forget the experience like that?

Unfortunately my hopes of the cast album went unfulfilled, though all the other flops and near flops I saw that week were eventually preserved on original cast recordings in LP, cassette and CD formats. Over the years, I've heard rumors that in his lifetime Bernstein had stopped attempts to record or revive the show because he had borrowed so much of the score for other projects.

Now we have The White House Cantata. It is a brave attempt, but in terms of recreating 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue it is more of a failure than the original show. I love Thomas Hampson and June Anderson on the opera stage, but 1600, like West Side Story, Candide and the other Bernstein shows, was not written as an opera. It was intended to be a bold and brassy Broadway show, and I would give anything to hear it done again by the likes of Ken Howard, Patricia Routledge, Gilbert Price and Emily Yancy.

Do yourself a favor and listen to one of the most complex theatre scores ever written. With lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Leonard Bernstein, this cd will haunt you for the rest of your life. I was an actor living in New York when this show opened; however, I was on the road in "Jesus Christ Superstar" and didn't get to see any of its few performances. From the things I have read about the production, "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" suffered from lack of cohesiveness and too much control for Bernstein and Lerner. It went through two directors who didn't have a great track record then or now. If only Jerome Robbins hadn't deserted Broadway for the ballet world, who knows what this rich score would have harvested? All we have now is this cd and alas it is not complete.

In this lamentable conservative era, some brave Broadway producer should hire Joe Mantello to direct and Kristen Chenoweth, Brian Stoke Mitchell, Billy Porter and Audra MacDonald to star. Broadway would have the artistic shot in the arm it so desparately needs.

A White House Cantata is actually from Leonard Bernstein's last piece for the Broadway stage, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, written in 1976. The show was a commercial disaster; in fact, during the tumultuous preview period, Bernstein rewrote or discarded so much material that, as the liner notes indicate, he eventually wrote more music for this show than for anything else he ever worked on. Of the portion that finally made it to Broadway, only about half is represented here. That alone is upsetting; this recording drops all but the historical scenes, in an attempt to give it some coherence, but really there is no coherence at all anyway. What emerges is simply a song cycle about the Presidency. Why, then, didnt they just include everything?

But there isnt anything I can do about that; and what is here is often breathtaking. Bernstein's genius for blending musical literacy, fascinating dissonace, and lush melody - often in the same song - is amply evident, from the moving prelude and infectious opening march, through the brief but ravishing "If I was a Dove" and "Welcome Home Miz Adams," to the lovely "Take Care of This House" (a song which has been performed by various singers over the years.) "Seena" is a song that very nearly soars, with unexpected lilts and catches in the melody; The Jefferson March is very appealing (and funny) despite a bizarre time signature; and the Minstrel Show - despite being impaled by a bad lyric - is also very sprightly and catchy. And on and on, right to the end. His delicious talent for changing keys mid-refrain and fiddling with syncopation, creating complex yet memorable tunes, is evident everywhere, especially in "Welcome Home," "Black and Bright," and "If I Was A Dove." The lyrics are, for the most part, excellent - Lerner was a brilliant writer.

Some songs do not land quite as effectively, however. The extended Sonatina is really just a lot of dialogue set over music, with a reworked star spangled banner at the end (for thematic effect.) The Duet for One is far too busy to come across unless you listen to it over and over again several times (this is partially the quality of the recording at fault.) The same can be said of the Monroviad and "We Must Have a Ball." The finale, too, is billowy and prosaic, and far too slow. This was the phase of Bernstein's career which, Stephen Sondheim has noted, was marked by a bad case of "importantitis" - that is, he felt everything he wrote had to be his seering final statement. This heaviness is, unfortunately, also evident in places other than the finale.

The score is also marred by the fact that Bernstein - understandably upset that his score was going unnoticed - recycled the music from this show constantly. The Grand Old Party March turned into the first movement of Slava!; the Prelude was set to a Whitman poem in Songfest; This Time was used in A Quiet Place; Lud's Wedding sounds exactly like several pieces he had already written (the woodwind passages in the Somewhere Ballet, the second movement of Facsimile, the first Chichester Pslam.)And so on.

But all in all, the poor sides considered, it is a marvelous score, a must at the very least for Bernstein fans. As for the recording itself - the performers are often less than top-notch. Thomas Hampson (who was excellent singing Bernstein's Arias and Barcarolles) is in good form here as well, although the music for the President is often the least interesting. June Anderson doesn't fare quite as well; her biggest number, the Duet for One, is unclear (musically and lyrically) without multiple hearings. Kenneth Tarver as Lud is generally great, but Barbara Hendricks as Seena sounds like she has a cold at some points, especially in Black and Bright. Victor Acquah as Little Lud is somewhat hampered by his thick accent, especially when the slave dialect is written into the lyrics, but that's forgiveable; also, the range of the part forces him into falsetto many times, with bad vocal breaks. But he performs his one solo - If I Was a Dove - very well. The orchestra is fine, but the orchestrations are often incoherent, a result i assume of the extreme difficulty of the score.

As I stated already, I don;t want to quibble. This is NOT Bernstein's best work, nor is it the best possible recording of it; but it is the only one we have as of yet, and therefore it is very important, and I am in the debt of the CD's producers. IT is well worth making A White House Cantata part of your collection.

One of my fondest memories of going to the theatre as a kid was the opening number of "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" entitled "Rehearse." Even though the show was done eons ago and I only saw it once, that Bernstein melody (rhythmic, syncopated, exciting) has always stayed with me. How disappointing then to not find that song on this album. The show was about a theatrical ensemble presenting to the audience the history of the White House, and the songs were divided between those of the ensemble "rehearsing" and the actual enactments themselves. Nagano and his producers have made the decision to exclude all but the latter from their cantata, and for simplicity's sake this would seem to make sense. However, the historical numbers on their own prove not to be very good. In fairness, the other half of the show may not have been all that brilliant either. ("1600..." was, after all, a notorious flop.) But my dim, adolescent recollection was that it all worked much better in performance. Bernstein's melodies are, for the most part, uninspired (except for the haunting "Take Care of This House" and the jazzy "Lud's Wedding") and Lerner's lyrics are arch, forced, and unnecessarily complicated. (Could I do better? Hell, no; this is simply my most humble opinion.) Thomas Hampson is in splendid voice (as always), but June Anderson is unfortunately humourless, particularly in the tour de force number in which she plays competing First Ladies. (I'll never forget Patricia Routledge's near genius interpretation of this on stage.) Let's hope someone will come along and do a full recording of all the material from the show, one that lacks the pretentiousness that so often sabotages this recording.

This is another gem Bernstein has produced that has finally got some attention. Despite the fact that some of the entire work was removed it is still great. Most Bernstein fans would know the song 'Take Care of this House'. That is only the beginning of great songs on this CD. Ten Square Miles by the Potomac River was a nice opening piece to begin the musical. President Washington (Thomas Hampson, who plays the part of every president) sings it marvelously along with doing a pretty good acting job on the spoken lines. There is quite a variety of moods in this piece from frightened to comic to folk tunes. The arrangement of the 'suite' so to speak of the musical put together here is very well done. June Anderson was wonderful in the role(s) of the presidents' wives. Another wonderful recording she did was the DG recording of Candide as Cunegonde.

Seeing how this is the only sizeable recording of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue you should buy it. There are no other recordings of it out there. The recording quality is also very good. Plus, the CD is cramed full of a little over 80 minutes of songs. Very good value. Buy it.

One other late Bernstein gem that is underappreciated is Quiet Place, his last opera which is the sequel of Trouble in Tahiti.