Bernstein, Overture to Candide
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) sprang to fame in 1943 when he found himself conducting the New York Philharmonic on short notice. He had studied with the top names in the music world at Harvard and the Curtis Institute and had just been appointed assistant conductor. So when the scheduled guest conductor came down with the flu, Bernstein took the stage at Carnegie Hall. The concert was broadcast on national radio, and his conducting career took off.
Many people got to know Bernstein through his Young People’s Concerts, a series of 53 televised programs produced from 1958-1972 in which he conducted and explained music to a live audience of children. The programs have been acclaimed as the best music education series ever televised. The complete set is in publication and can be purchased on DVD.
He also championed the music of American composer Charles Ives and led a revival of interest in Gustav Mahler.
And we know Bernstein as the composer of West Side Story. His collaboration with lyricist Stephen Sondheim, choreographer Jerome Robbins, and writer Arthur Laurents makes an interesting story in itself. You can hear Professor Carol tell it in one of her podcasts.
It was about the same time that Bernstein wrote the music for Candide, an operetta based on Voltaire’s satirical novella of 1759. Voltaire’s work is filled with sarcasm, wit, and irony as it portrays the title character indoctrinated in a philosophy of naive optimism. But the operetta had a bumpy road to success. The original production flopped on Broadway in 1956. According to some reviews, the text by Lillian Hellman was too heavy-handed. (That criticism did not apply to Bernstein’s music.) A second version, absent the work of Hellman, found more success in London. It was later expanded, and in 1988 Bernstein was making changes to the music to fit the latest version. He then conducted a recording of the complete new version in 1989.
