Bernstein • Copland: Chamber Works

Our rating

4

Geoff Brown

Published: November 20, 2023 at 9:52 am
Our review
In 1936, Leonard Bernstein, a Harvard student, turned 18. We can’t now bring back to life one of his musical accomplishments of the year – a staged production of HMS Pinafore. But the position is different with his mysterious and exciting Music for String Quartet, briefly performed privately at the time from an unfinished, dishevelled manuscript, later bequeathed to one of the performers (a friend and Boston Symphony Orchestra violinist) before being finally tracked down, edited, reunited with another torso found at the Library of Congress, and given its world premiere at Tanglewood in November 2021 by the excellent current musicians. The dissonant musings of the three-minute slow movement (marked andante, tempo di sarabande) scarcely suggest the mature Bernstein. But his future achievements are easier to glimpse in the youthful surging motion and folksy and jazzy inflections of the opening seven-minute allegro vivace. A final fast movement would seem indicated, for the sake of balance. This fascinating EP release is usefully filled out with Copland’s two Elegies for violin and viola, written in Mexico in 1933 but withdrawn by the composer after he more or less transcribed the first elegy as the fourth movement of his orchestral Statements. Pared down to two instruments, the spare harmonies occasionally recall the ‘open air’ Copland of the 1940s, but the general ambience remains one of tough modernity, then his chief mode of address. Performances from all four musicians are robustly expressive, whether the famous composers are frowning, briefly melodious, or busy practising jazz calisthenics. Geoff Brown

Bernstein: Music for String Quartet; Copland: Elegies for Violin and Viola

Lucia Lin (violin), Natalie Rose Kress (violin), Danny Kim (viola), Ronald Feldman (cello)

Navona NV6557 (EP)   17:16 mins

In 1936, Leonard Bernstein, a Harvard student, turned 18. We can’t now bring back to life one of his musical accomplishments of the year – a staged production of HMS Pinafore. But the position is different with his mysterious and exciting Music for String Quartet, briefly performed privately at the time from an unfinished, dishevelled manuscript, later bequeathed to one of the performers (a friend and Boston Symphony Orchestra violinist) before being finally tracked down, edited, reunited with another torso found at the Library of Congress, and given its world premiere at Tanglewood in November 2021 by the excellent current musicians. The dissonant musings of the three-minute slow movement (marked andante, tempo di sarabande) scarcely suggest the mature Bernstein. But his future achievements are easier to glimpse in the youthful surging motion and folksy and jazzy inflections of the opening seven-minute allegro vivace. A final fast movement would seem indicated, for the sake of balance.
This fascinating EP release is usefully filled out with Copland’s two Elegies for violin and viola, written in Mexico in 1933 but withdrawn by the composer after he more or less transcribed the first elegy as the fourth movement of his orchestral Statements. Pared down to two instruments, the spare harmonies occasionally recall the ‘open air’ Copland of the 1940s, but the general ambience remains one of tough modernity, then his chief mode of address. Performances from all four musicians are robustly expressive, whether the famous composers are frowning, briefly melodious, or busy practising jazz calisthenics. Geoff Brown

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