Customer Reviews

Leonard Bernstein - A Total Embrace: The Conductor

5 star:		(0)
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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

As you can see from the track listing provided by Amazon, this is (mostly) a 3 disc set containing a number of single movements from longer performances of complete works (there are a couple of complete works - see below). It is a selection of performances that was put together in order to provide an overview and introduction to Bernstein's conducting accomplishments, and was released by Sony in 2003 to commemorate what would have been Bernstein's 85th birthday (not to waste any possible anniversary, that).

The earliest of the performances is La Flūte enchantée from Shéhérazade (Three songs for Voice and Orchestra), recorded in 1950 (in mono but the sound is very good), and the latest is from 1976 (Falla: El Amor Brujo - The Magic Circle, Song Of The Fisherman).

The complete compositions included on the discs are: Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question; Aaron Copland's El Salón México; and George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue". The last performance was recorded at the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn, NY, and Bernstein both conducted the Columbia Symphony Orchestra and performed on the piano.

The performances are quite good, enthusiastic and the recording quality throughout is excellent.

The three CD's are packaged nicely with a small booklet listing details of each selection including performance venue and dates, and with a short essay written by Maurice Peress, who was Bernstein's assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic beginning in 1961, and collaborated with Bernstein frequently thereafter.

The discs include one composition that I had not heard before. On disc 2, there is a performance of Reisado Do Pastoreio - Batuque by the Brazilian composer Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez that is nice. There is also a very enjoyable performance of Semper Fidelis by John Philip Sousa which I did not have previously on CD.

As a highlights set I would say that this is a worthwhile purchase. There is a lot of great music contained on these discs. It is very reasonably priced, and the three discs are jam packed with music, 3.8 hours total, so Sony did use practically every kb available - nice! It could also be used as a good introductory disc to present to someone new to classical music, to provide some examples of a nice variety of composers and works. Of course, these days you can create the same thing using a playlist and your iPod or MP3 player, if you happen to have these particular selections already, but maybe not if you wanted to have everything conducted by Bernstein, which after all is the point of the set.

For the serious classical music collector this is probably not something of interest, but for the other reasons briefly given above I think it can be a very good acquisition. I give it three stars only because I think it is something of limited interest, not because of any deficiencies in quality of the performances or recordings.