In which I can admit I'm wrong

I'm about a week late with this, but I had once joked that despite their respective decades of hard living, Leonard Bernstein would end up living a longer life than Keith Richards for the sole reason that in classical music one can't smoke onstage. (Along with the constant smoking, Lenny was also into booze and pills, and generally didn't take great care of himself.) Well, on February 4, Keith made it to day 26,346 (72 years, 1 month, 2 weeks, 2 days) moving past the maestro. Credit where credit is due, I suppose.

Bernstein's Copland 3rd at Tanglewood, 1990

I don't know how long this site will be active, but the Boston Symphony has posted a series of broadcast recordings from Tanglewood. One bit of essential listening (week 8, selection number 6) , from August 18, 1990, is Leonard Bernstein's penultimate performance a mere 57 days before his death, of Aaron Copland's Symphony No. 3. Copland would die on December 2.

The Sunday afternoon BSO concert would be his last. It was released by Deutsche Grammophon with great and somber fanfare, and it's, you know, good and all, but this performance from Saturday night should be the bang he's remembered for going out with. It was quite well regarded at the time.

Number One for February 13, 2015

Igor Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps as performed by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic

 

The famous January 20, 1958 recording which Sony Classical had kept slightly out of view for too long before giving it a classy reissue for the Rite's centenary in 2013. Ironically, I just got around to acquiring it while killing time at Newbury Comics, waiting for the ever more impatient rush hour crowds at the bus stop to thin out (and chill out) in our snow addled present state.

Top 3 from March 4, 2014

God Said from Leonard Bernstein's Mass - A theater piece for singers, players and dancers, from the composer lead original recording from 1971

The work as a whole seeks to find a place for a functioning church in a disruptive, knowingly evolving society. A setting of the mass, but with interjection and commentary from, for the sake of argument, the real world. This song, labled “Gospel-Sermon”, sung from the point of view of the street, gives a litany of complaints about the church's hypocrisy in a jaunty yet powerful way, certainly a highlight and microcosm of the whole.

Top 6 for February 27, 2014

Mea Culpa by Brian Eno and David Byrne

Some things never change. Catch the Chris Christie remake!

Düdül - Ensemble Oni Wytars, Ensemble Unicorn from Time of the Templars - Music of the Mediterranean

Hand drums and bagpipes, super funky Traditonal Turkish music from the Middle Ages