Leonard Bernstein - Young People's Concerts / New York Philharmonic

Bernstein is completely at ease talking to his audience. He can take the most abstruse subject - the meaning and function of intervals, tonality and atonality, the links between Gustav Mahler's troubled life and his music - and present them to a young audience with clarity, without condescension, and with a clear sense of the material's value. His subject-matter is enormously varied. For Igor Stravinsky's 80th birthday, he simply tells his audience the story of Petrouchka while conducting a dazzling performance of the colorful ballet. For a program on "Folk Music in the Concert Hall," he plays some of Canteloube's folk song arrangements and the boisterous finale of Ives's Symphony No. 2, full of borrowed pop and folk melodies. The influence of folk music is shown in folk song imitations by Mozart and Carlos Chavez.

The sound and images, taped over a 15-year span when the art of recording was rapidly advancing, are varied in quality; the series begins in black-and-white and ends in vivid color. Not all of the programs are equally compelling, but all are worth close and repeated attention. --Joe McLellan

Description
Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic stand among his greatest achievements. These televised programs introduced an entire generation to the joys of classical music. Bernstein conducted his first Young People's Concert on January 18, 1958, just two weeks after becoming Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. Such programs were already a Philharmonic tradition when Bernstein arrived, but he made them a centerpiece of his work, part of what he described as his "educational mission." Looking back on the concerts years later, he referred to them as being "among my favorite, most highly prized activities of my life." When he took a sabbatical season from the orchestra in 1964-65, he still came back to lead the Young People's Concerts. He continued to lead these programs until 1972, even though he had stepped down as director of the Philharmonic in 1969. Bernstein led a total of fifty-three Young People's Concerts during those fourteen years, and covered a broad range of subjects. The works of the great composers were explored, including tributes to modern masters such as Dmitri Shostakovich, Paul Hindemith, Gustav Holst, Aaron Copland and Charles Ives. Bernstein discussed "Jazz in the Concert Hall," "Folk Music in the Concert Hall," and "The Latin-American Spirit." He explained the intricacies of Music Theory in programs such as "Musical Atoms: A Study of Intervals" and "What is a Mode?" He broached complex aesthetic issues such as "What Does Music Mean?" (his first program) with clarity and without condescension. Bernstein also used the Young People's Concerts to introduce young performers to the musical world. The sixteen year-old pianist Andre Watts made his debut in the concert of January 15, 1963. Originally broadcast on Saturday mornings, the programs were considered so important that for three glorious years CBS presented them at 7:30 p.m. (prime time for television viewing). Eventually the programs were moved to Sunday afternoons. The concerts were translated into other languages and syndicated to forty countries.