Leonard Bernstein - An American in Paris (2018) [CD-Rip]

This 7-CD set is the fruit of the love affair that developed in Paris between Leonard Bernstein and the Orchestre National de France in the 1970s. Beside long-admired studio recordings, featuring Mstislav Rostropovich and Alexis Weissenberg among the soloists, it presents live performances completely new to the catalogue: a 1975 programme to celebrate Ravel’s centenary – with Bernstein himself as soloist in the G major Piano Concerto – and orchestral suites taken from two of Bernstein’s most celebrated and brilliant works, both infused with jazz: the film score On the Waterfront and the landmark Broadway musical West Side Story.

25 August 2018 marks the centenary of the birth of American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990). He was one of the most celebrated and charismatic musicians of his time, an artist who transcended conventional boundaries between genres. Warner Classics owns the treasurable and substantial catalogue of recordings made in Paris in the latter part of the 1970s during Bernstein’s ‘love affair’ with the Orchestre National de France (ONF). A key selling point of this box is that it complements these well-known studio recordings with previously unreleased live recordings (radio broadcasts) that Bernstein made with the ONF in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Among these are two famous works by Bernstein himself, including the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.

The set also includes 3 rehearsal sequences (of music by Ravel) which showcase Bernstein’s passion as a musician and demonstrate the close relationship between him and the Orchestre National de France

Leonard Bernstein, born near Boston in 1918, was one of the most prominent musicians of the mid-to-late 20th century. The Los Angeles Times recently described Bernstein as “the most celebrated, most multitalented and most American musician of his time”. As a composer, Bernstein is best known for the landmark Broadway musical West Side Story, which is represented in this set. In addition to other musicals and the score for the 1954 film On the Waterfront he wrote a substantial and artistically ambitious body of compositions for the concert hall, two operas and two ballet scores.

As a conductor, Bernstein had a 47-year relationship with the New York Philharmonic. He also enjoyed close links with the Vienna Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, and of course the Orchestre National de France where he remains, 40 years after their collaboration, a musical and human hero. Bernstein was the first conductor to give a series of television lectures on classical music, starting in 1954 and continuing until his death.

Leonard Bernstein died in October 1990. On Christmas Day 1989 he had conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the former East Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. This ‘Ode to Freedom’ was described by Die Welt’s writer Klaus Geitel as marking “the absolute climax in the public life of the world citizen Leonard Bernstein”.