Press Clipping, "Spectacular Success – Grand Gala became Bernstein’s Show"

Spectacular Success – Grand Gala Became Bernstein’s Show — Brilliant String Sounds

For the opening of the Grand Gala du Disque Classique, Leonard Bernstein, winner of the Edison Classical Music Award, conducted the New York Philharmonic Orchestra on Friday evening on the beautiful rose-decorated stage of the Grote Zaal of the Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw in a performance of Haydn’s Symphony No. 87 in A major.

The Haydn interpretation was not so recognizable as an 18th-century Viennese classical work with distinction, singing quality, nuance, suppleness, and evenness to create logic, clear and bright. Bernstein’s interpretation was full of random, opportunistic, sometimes fragmented virtuosity but nevertheless came across as a spectacular success. It did, however, leave Haydn a bit in pieces.

It’s undeniable that Bernstein works with virtuosic musicians. Looking for ways to describe this 106-member ensemble (conducted by Mahler, Toscanini, Bruno Walter, and Leopold Stokowski), the most obvious is an energetic, powerful playing style of the intensely brilliant strings and rounded brass rhythms. After his 10-year tenure in New York, Bernstein uses these characteristics to place his own stamp on the Orchestra’s sound, as unorthodox as his expressions may be.

Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique formed a heavy but elegant ending for this grand gala audience which was already enchanting due to Bernstein’s magical direction.