''Arias and Barcarolles'' is a 78-minute contemporary classical studio album of music by

Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein ( ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first America ...

, performed by

Thomas Hampson Thomas Walter Hampson (born June 28, 1955) is an American lyric baritone, a classical singer who has appeared world-wide in major opera houses and concert halls and made over 170 musical recordings. Hampson's operatic repertoire spans a range ...

Frederica von Stade Frederica von Stade OAL (born June 1, 1945) is a semi-retired American opera singer. Since her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1970, she has performed in operas, musicals, concerts and recitals in venues throughout the world, including La Scala, th ...

, Simon Carrington, Neil Percy and the

London Symphony Orchestra The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is a British symphony orchestra based in London. Founded in 1904, the LSO is the oldest of London's orchestras, symphony orchestras. The LSO was created by a group of players who left Henry Wood's Queen's ...

under the direction of

Michael Tilson Thomas Michael Tilson Thomas (born December 21, 1944) is an American conductor, pianist and composer. He is Artistic Director Laureate of the New World Symphony, an American orchestral academy based in Miami Beach, Florida, Music Director Laureate of ...

. In addition to the song cycle which gives it its name, the album includes the ''Suite'' from Bernstein's opera ''

A Quiet Place ''A Quiet Place'' is a 2018 American post-apocalyptic horror film directed by John Krasinski and written by Bryan Woods, Scott Beck and Krasinski, from a story conceived by Woods and Beck. The plot revolves around a father (Krasinski) and a mo ...

'' and the ''Symphonic Dances'' from his musical ''

West Side Story ''West Side Story'' is a musical conceived by Jerome Robbins with music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Inspired by William Shakespeare's play ''Romeo and Juliet'', the story is set in the mid-1 ...

''. It was released in 1996.

Background

''Arias and Barcarolles'' exists in four versions.Bernstein, Leonard: ''Arias and Barcarolles'', cond. Michael Tilson Thomas, Deutsche Grammophon CD, 439 926-2 The first version is scored for four singers and piano duet, and was first performed in May 1988 in New York City by

Joyce Castle Joyce Castle (born Lillian Joyce Malicky, on January 17, 1939, in Beaumont, Texas) is an American mezzo-soprano who has had an active opera career for the last four decades. She earned degrees in music from The University of Kansas and the Eastm ...

, Louise Edeiken, John Brandstetter, Mordechai Kaston, Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas. The second version is scored for two singers and piano duet, and was first performed on April 22, 1989, in the Recanati Hall of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art by Amalia Ishak, Raphael Frieder, Irit Rub-Levy and Ariel Cohen. This version was recorded by

Judy Kaye Judy Kaye (born October 11, 1948) is an American singer and actress. She has appeared in stage musicals, plays, and operas. Kaye has been in long runs on Broadway in the musicals ''The Phantom of the Opera'', ''Ragtime'', '' Mamma Mia!'', and ...

, William Sharp, Michael Barrett and Steven Blier and released on CD in 1990 by Koch International Classics (catalogue number 37000-2). The third version, orchestrated by

Bright Sheng Bright Sheng (Chinese: 盛宗亮 pinyin: ''Shèng Zōngliàng''; born December 6, 1955) is a Chinese-born American composer, pianist and conductor. Sheng has earned many honors for his music and compositions, including a MacArthur Fellowship in ...

, is scored for two singers, strings and percussion, and was first performed in September 1989 in New York City by

Susan Graham Susan Graham (born July 23, 1960) is an American mezzo-soprano. Life and career Susan Graham was born in Roswell, New Mexico on July 23, 1960. Raised in Midland, Texas, Graham is a graduate of Texas Tech University and the Manhattan School o ...

Kurt Ollmann Kurt Ollmann (born January 19, 1957 in Racine, Wisconsin), is an American operatic baritone, known for his frequent musical association with composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein from 1982 until Bernstein's death in 1990. He has performed extens ...

and the

New York Chamber Symphony The New York Chamber Symphony (NYCS) was an American chamber orchestra based in New York City. It was active from 1977 to 2002. It was founded in 1977 by its founding music director Gerard Schwarz, and Omus Hirshbein. Its original name was the Y Ch ...

of the 92nd Street Y under the direction of

Gerard Schwarz Gerard Schwarz (born August 19, 1947), also known as Gerry Schwarz or Jerry Schwarz, is an American symphony conductor and trumpeter. As of 2019, Schwarz serves as the Artistic and Music Director of Palm Beach Symphony and the Director of Orche ...

. This version was recorded by Jane Bunnell,

Dale Duesing Dale Duesing (born September 26, 1947) is an American baritone. As an opera singer, he has had an international career spanning five decades. Duesing grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He studied piano throughout childhood, and enrolled at Lawrence ...

and the

Seattle Symphony The Seattle Symphony is an American orchestra based in Seattle, Washington. Since 1998, the orchestra is resident at Benaroya Hall. The orchestra also serves as the accompanying orchestra for the Seattle Opera. History Beginnings The orchestra ...

under Schwarz and released on CD in 1990 by Delos (catalogue number DE 3078). The fourth version, orchestrated by

Bruce Coughlin Bruce Coughlin ( ) is an American orchestrator and musical arranger. He has won a Tony Award (out of 3 total nominations), a Drama Desk Award (out of 11 total nominations), and an Obie Award. Personal life He currently lives in the East Villa ...

, is scored for two singers and a full orchestra, and was first performed in September 1993 in the

Barbican Hall The Barbican Centre is a performing arts centre in the Barbican Estate of the City of London and the largest of its kind in Europe. The centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhibi ...

, London by the soloists, orchestra and conductor of the present album. In 2018, SFS Media released a new recording of Coughlin's version, performed by

Isabel Leonard Isabel Leonard (born February 18, 1982) is an American mezzo-soprano opera singer based in New York City. She is of Argentine ancestry on her mother's side. Education Leonard was born in New York City. For five years she sang with the Manhattan S ...

, Ryan McKinny and the

San Francisco Symphony The San Francisco Symphony (SFS), founded in 1911, is an American orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980 the orchestra has been resident at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the city's Hayes Valley neighborhood. The San Fr ...

under Tilson Thomas's direction. The name of the song cycle was inspired by a remark of President

Dwight D. Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...

's. Thanking Bernstein after a concert of music by

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...

and Gershwin that his guest had conducted at the White House on April 5, 1960, the President said "I like that last piece you played. It's got a theme. I like music with a theme, not all them arias and barcarolles".

Recording

The album was digitally recorded in September 1993 in the Henry Wood Hall, London.

Packaging

The cover of the album was designed under the art direction of Fred Münzmaier, and features a photograph of Bernstein taken by

Don Hunstein Donald Robert Hunstein (November 19, 1928 – March 18, 2017) was an American photographer. Life He studied at Washington University in St. Louis, graduating in 1950. Later he served in the United States Air Force in England. He returned to th ...

Critical reception

Edward Seckerson Edward Seckerson is a British music journalist and radio presenter specialising in musical theatre. Formerly Chief Classical Music Critic of the Independent, Edward Seckerson is a writer, broadcaster and podcaster. He wrote and presented the lon ...

reviewed the album in ''

Gramophone A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

'' in November 1996. Among the many playful allusions in ''Arias and Barcarolles'', he wrote, was one to

Johannes Brahms Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid- Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped wit ...

's '' Liebeslieder Walzer'', and it was this particular witticism that was key to understanding the essence of Bernstein's song cycle. Half public, half private, half formal, half informal, it was written to be performed for a small, invited audience in a domestic setting, and it was conceived for the "time-honoured intimacy" of voice and piano. To orchestrate it was to violate it. Bruce Coughlin's version "takes the piece somewhere else, it distracts from, pulls focus from, the ingenuity and intrigue of the word-play, it over-paints the musical allusions, shifts the emphasis from implicit to explicit." Thus Bernstein's hint of Straussian romanticism in "Little Smary" was inflated into a passage that could have come straight from the pages of ''

Der Rosenkavalier (''The Knight of the Rose'' or ''The Rose-Bearer''), Op. 59, is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel ''Les amours du chevalier de Faublas'' ...

''. "The Wedding" became overtly

Mahler Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism ...

ian. "Mr and Mrs Webb Say Goodnight" was invaded by a blatant

Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, , group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throughout his life as a major compo ...

march. "Greeting" – a setting of a poem that Bernstein had written to celebrate the birth of one of his children – was made less affecting, not more, by a commentary from strings and woodwinds. And in the cycle's concluding "Nachspiel", "a slow waltz, sweet and indelible and so very personal, the hummed descant like a shared confidence", the orchestra seemed wholly intrusive. It had to be admitted, though, that Thomas Hampson and Frederica von Stade were "attention grabbing". They "don't miss a trick. Individually, and as sparring partners, they come on a treat".Seckerson, Edward: ''Gramophone'', November 1996, pp. 132–137 The ''Suite'' from ''A Quiet Place'' was an altogether more successful feat of reimagining. Michael Tilson Thomas, Sid Ramin and Michael Barrett had extracted a quasi-symphony from Bernstein's opera "with uncanny sureness and sleight of hand". Their ''Suites sound-world – including "oddly retrogressive bursts of twanging synthesizer" – was "''echt'' Bernstein". A jazzy trombone solo was almost better than the aria from which it had been adapted, and it had been a clever idea to use Bernstein's Act 1 postlude to end the ''Suite'' in a kind of valedictory blessing. The London Symphony Orchestra could not have played with a surer grasp of Bernstein's idiom. The orchestra's handling of the ''Symphonic Dances'' from ''West Side Story'' was less satisfying. They were good in the tender music of "Somewhere" or "I have a love", but disappointing in the ''Dances more energetic passages. If one likened their performance to a car, it would be "a flashy vehicle all right (cool paint job, all chromium fittings), but it's driving with the handbrake on". On a good night, Maurice Murphy would deliver the mariachi trumpet break in "Mambo" in a way that would "fry the air around him", but even he had been unable to raise the temperature in the Henry Wood Hall to where it needed to be. In sum, the ''Suite'' from ''A Quiet Place'' was the only item on the album's menu that could be recommended without reservations. 2014 Thomas Hampson (14487117416)

David Gutman reviewed the album in ''Gramophone'' in December 1996. He enjoyed the ''Suite'' from ''A Quiet Place'', and thought the ''Symphonic Dances'' from ''West Side Story'' "very good, if not the exceptional treat I was anticipating". But the album's presentation of its eponymous song cycle disappointed him. Bruce Coughlin's orchestration, he wrote, "coarsens what are merely allusions" in Bernstein's original piano-accompanied version. Bright Cheng had been more imaginative than Coughlin in borrowing "''echt'' Bernstein effects". Indeed, it was not clear that a second orchestration of the cycle had been needed. Nor should the album's performances escape a degree of censure. Thomas Hampson and Frederica von Stade were "more opulent vocally" than their rivals on other recordings of the cycle, but also "mostly blander". The London Symphony Orchestra's playing was "by no means ideally pointed". Michael Tilson Thomas's pacing was slow from his first bar to his last, and the humour of Bernstein's musical in-jokes was not as amusing as it ought to be. Gutman considered "Arias and Barcarolles" to be one of Bernstein's most accomplished works, and he had hoped that Tilson Thomas's recording would be a great one, but it was "not really a success". Eric Salzman reviewed the album in ''

Stereo Review ''Sound & Vision'' is an American magazine, purchased by AVTech Media Ltd. (UK) in March 2018, covering home theater, audio, video and multimedia consumer products. Before 2000, it had been published for most of its history as ''Stereo Review''. ...

'' in December 1996. ''Arias and Barcarolles'' and the ''Suite'' from the poorly received ''A Quiet Place'' were among just a few works that emerged from Bernstein's old age, he wrote, a time when the composer's thoughts were governed by an "obsessive preoccupation with the trials and tribulations of family life". Like the ''Symphonic Dances'' from ''West Side Story'', they reflected two aspects of Bernstein's complex musical personality, blending classical elements with jazz. Bruce Coughlin's orchestration of the song cycle, crafted with Bernstein looking over his shoulder, was not only effective but also fairly Bernstein-like in its flavour. Thomas Hampson and Frederica von Stade both sang their music "neatly". The stirring ''Suite'' from ''A Quiet Place'' was deservedly more popular than its source had ever been, and Michael Tilson Thomas, "a perpetual ''Wunderkind'' in the Bernstein tradition", was the ideal man to conduct it. Indeed, all three of the works on his album were presented in performances that were "serious, sincere and animated". The London Symphony Orchestra managed to sound comfortably at home in Bernstein's modern American style without sacrificing its traditional identity.Salzman, Eric: ''Stereo Review'', December 1996, p. 113

CD track listing

(1918–1990) ''Arias and Barcarolles'' (1988), orchestrated by

* 1 (1:37) I: Prelude (text by Leonard Bernstein), Frederica von Stade and Thomas Hampson * 2 (4:43) II: Love Duet (text by Leonard Bernstein for JAVE), Frederica von Stade and Thomas Hampson * 3 (2:36) III: Little Smary (text by Jennie Bernstein for SAB), Frederica von Stade * 4 (4:50) IV: The Love of My Life (text by Leonard Bernstein to SWZ for KO), Thomas Hampson * 5 (3:06) V: Greeting (text by Leonard Bernstein for JG), Frederica von Stade * 6 (5:35) VI: Oif Mayn Khas'neh t My Wedding(text by Yankev-Yitskhok Segal for MTT), Thomas Hampson * 7 (8:30) VII: Mr and Mrs Webb Say Goodnight (text by Leonard Bernstein for Mino and Lezbo), Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, Neil Perry and Simon Carrington * 8 (2:48) VIII: Nachspiel ostlude Frederica von Stade and Thomas Hampson ''Suite'' from ''

'' (1983), arranged by Sid Ramin (1919–2019) and Michael Tilson Thomas with the assistance of Michael Barrett * 9 (2:37) Prologue *10 (4:45) Sam's Aria *11 (5:02) Trio *12 (3:12) Jazz Trio ("Mornin' Sun") *13 (1:44) Chorale *14 (4:47) Postlude to Act I ''Symphonic Dances'' from ''

'' (1957), orchestrated by Sid Ramin and

Irwin Kostal Irwin Kostal (October 1, 1911 – November 23, 1994) was an American musical arranger of films and an orchestrator of Broadway musicals. Biography Born in Chicago, Illinois, Kostal attended Harrison Technical High School, but opted not to atten ...

(1911–1994) under the supervision of Leonard Bernstein *15 (3:52) Prologue – ''Allegro moderato'' *16 (4:09) "Somewhere" – ''Adagio'' *17 (1:16) Scherzo – ''Vivace leggiero'' *18 (2:15) Mambo – ''Presto'' *19 (0:50) Cha-Cha – ''Andantino con grazia'' *20 (1:31) Meeting Scene – ''Meno mosso'' *21 (2:48) "Cool": Fugue – ''Allegretto'' *22 (2:03) Rumble – ''Molto allegro'' *23 (3:26) Finale – ''Adagio''

Personnel

Musical

, mezzo-soprano *

. baritone * Neil Percy, voice * Simon Carrington, voice *

, conductor

Other

* Alison Ames, executive producer * Pål Christian Moe, associate producer * Christian Gansch, recording producer * Gregor Zielinsky, balance engineer * Jobst Eberhardt, recording engineer * Klaus Behrens, recording engineer * Stephan Flock, editor

Release history

In 1996, Deutsche Grammophon released the album on CD (catalogue number 439 926-2) with a 48-page insert booklet providing texts in the original English and Yiddish and in French and German translations. The booklet also included photographs of von Stade, Hampson, Tilson Thomas and Bernstein and notes by Michael Barrett and Steven Blier in English, French, German and Italian.

References

{{reflist 1996 classical albums Contemporary classical music albums Deutsche Grammophon albums