No I haven't got the composer wrong!

This is a great performance I thought I'd share with you. It's certainly the most gripping one I've heard of this piece! Enjoy

Click here - First part YouTube

Wow, that's great Freda! I love the way so many instruments get a go at the theme.

I wonder when that was recorded, as I believe Bernstein died in 1990.

Bernstein was a top chap being able to conduct and be the soloist too. Of course it was by Gershwin. At the very start it says it was recorded in 1976 in the RAH. Plenty of good videos on YouTube.

I beg to differ...being really picky about faithfulness to the score this recording he did is quite an exploitation on the liberties a performer has over the written score...and yes I have seen this video on youtube before I made this reply.

Don't get me wrong, Bernstein is a great pianist and a charming conductor (still one of my favourite), and he does do gripping performances, composes great works of music (Candide is one of my favourite) and preaches about conductor being servant to the composer and the score. Whether he practised what he preached is...er, somewhat dubious, in my opinion having listened to some of his recordings against a score (of several editions).

This will probably spark a debate of some sort seeing as Bernstein is one of the 'superstar' musicians of the 20th century; I do apologise in advance if it does, but from a pure factual standpoint this is what I personally do believe.

That's interesting Joolsters. Not having studied the piece, I've never seen the score and never really listened to it in so much detail - thing was, there was something about this interpretation that I really liked. It seems that Gershwin didn't get something right and Bernstein corrected him!

I'm playing, obviously, but it seems that Bernstein has obviously tapped into something interesting here; completely faithful to the score or not. Let's be honest, if it's had an affect on one listener (albeit a positive one), it's a successful interpretation...do you think?







*Currently glissing....*

I don't know, I have yet to find one which really stimulates me. Be it Stokowski, Bernstein, Andre Previn...I know it's a good piece and to be fair that one time I did it as conductor I wasn't all that impressed with the result either...meh

My view is that if you can't trust the score, what can you trust? Musical instincts are all well and good but we should remember the masters took the time and effort to write these scores out and as musicians we should respect that and give it a go first, even if we think it's total rubbish (one example would be the horn call in Beethoven 5 1st movt; the bassoons doing it the 2nd time DOES work perfectly if the horns don't absolutely blast out the first call at fffff, when it only says f). I mean I really do think Wagner is trash and I hate him with a passion, but that doesn't stop me disregarding what he wrote down on paper, or purposely rehearse his music badly, or learn it half-heartedly etc. And yes I do agree with you that an interpretation that communicates is better than no interpretation at all, however the fundamental fact is that a convincing interpretation performed wrongly is still WRONG. As a mathematician I can give you an extremely convincing and logical proof that 1 + 1 = 3, but that's not the point, because the fact of the matter is 1 + 1 is not 3. That sort of thing.

Seriously, an accurate AND an inspired reading of a piece of music is rare but when it's there it's breathtaking. von Karajan's (video) recording of Beethoven 7 is pretty accurate, but the Carlos Kleiber (also video) recording, now that's something different! It's actually on YouTube if anyone is interested; very rare because C. Kleiber rarely makes recordings or interviews, let alone video recordings.

Digressing, but I'm not a mathematician so please can you show me how 1 + 1 = 3? I'm being sincere btw! Will it all go over my head?

I can't remember the 1 + 1 = 3 one, but I can show you the 0 = 1 one:

0 = 0 + 0 + 0 + ... = (1 - 1) + (1 - 1) + (1 - 1) ... = 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 ... = 1 + (-1 + 1) + (-1 + 1) + ...

= 1 + 0 + 0 ... = 1

so 0 = 1

(by the way this is a fallacy and not actually true, but the reason why is slightly more complicated)

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Dragging it back, have just found some videos of Bernstein conducting his own work (Candide), and now this is really nice (and great fun piece!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcmAdS8vkDA...;watch_response

This is Bernstein conducting and June Anderson singing. There is a video of him conducting the Candide overture too under the related video sections.