Sergio A. Mims writes:
Conductor Wayne
Marshall announced on his Facebook page that he will be
conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Leonard Bernstein's A White
House Cantata next summer at Ravinia Music Festival outside Chicago on
Thursday, July 30.
The
work was adapted from music and songs from the 1976 Broadway musical
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. with music Bernstein wrote with lyrics from
Alan Jay Lerner (My Fair Lady, Camelot). The play only lasted 7
performances and both Bernstein and Lerner disappointed by the failure
of the play they stated at the time that there would be no cast
recording of the work.
However according to the New York Times, A
White House Cantata retains 90 minutes of the two hours of music from
“1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” and was shaped by Charlie Harmon, the former
music editor of the Bernstein estate, and Sid Ramin, an original
orchestrator of the show. Their purpose was to rescue Bernstein’s music
and Lerner’s lyrics from a clunky book overburdened with sermonizing
about race relations".
"The
score is Bernstein at his most exuberant and all-embracing.
Identifiable in it are anthems, ballads, blues, calypso, drinking songs,
Dixieland, torch songs, waltzes, jazz, hymns, spirituals, marches and a
cappella barbershop harmonies".
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