Bernstein Century – Music of Our Time: György Ligeti Atmospheres (1961), Morton Feldman Out of “Last Pieces” (1961), Four Improvisations by the orchestra, Edison Denisov Crescendo e Diminuendo for harpsichord and twelve strings (Joel Spiegelman harpsichord) (1965), Gunther Schuller Triplum (1967), Olivier Messiaen Trois petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine (1944) (Paul Jacobs piano, John Canarina ondes martenot), New York Philharmonic. Sony SMK 61845 (1999) barcode 5099706184522 (European edition) or 074646184523 (North-American edition)
Recorded: 6 November 1961 (Messiaen), 6 January 1964 (Ligeti), 11 February 1964 (Feldman and Improvisations) at Manhattan Center, 20 May 1967 (Denisov), 1 July 1967 at Philharmonic Hall (Schuller)
Warts and all, great to have these testimonies of Bernstein’s involvement with some of the most cutting-edge music of his time
Originally posted on Amazon.com, 25 July 2010. Repost is augmented of a few comments on the pieces of Feldman and Denisov that I originally had to leave out due to the length limitations of Amazon.
I tought Bernstein’s Liturgies would be far worse than they actually are. Messiaen was not, after all, Bernstein’s “natural” language (and I’m not just talking here of French versus American), and one could fear both an impossibly American accent from the woman’s chorus, and garish colors from the orchestra.
Not all of this turns out to be wrong, but in fact there are a number of very fine things in this recording. The woman’s chorus is not a model of angelic purity in this composition so fiendishly demanding for the voices, but their French accent, while certainly not perfect, is nothing to shame about. Anyway, even in the best versions the text is usually incomprehensible and drowned under the the instrumental ensemble, and with music and timbres so beautiful it is not really the words one concentrates upon; for all I care they could be singing an invented language, like the one Messiaen wrote in his song cycle Harawi. Yet I find it regrettable that the ladies from the Choral Arts Society should slightly roll their Rs as they do. It brings an unwelcome operatic and passé character to the music. In none of the composer-supervised versions (Marcel Couraud’s two recordings from 1954, now on EMI Rarissimes 3 85275 2 barcode 094638527527 , link to my review on Amazon.com pending repost here, and 1964 on Erato ECD 71594 barcode 3269657159425 from 1989 or 1993 reissue 4509-92007-2 745099200725, and Stéphane Cardon’s 1983 recording on Forlane UCD 16504/05 barcode 3298490165041, 1988 CD-reissue paired with Louis de Froment’s Turangalila Symphony) did the French ladies roll them, so presumably that’s the way Messiaen wanted it, and it sounds better. It is in the spoken and declamatory passages of the third movement that the delivery from Bernstein’s ladies bothered me the most; there they sound more like the shouting Portorican girls of West Side Story than like Messiaen’s mystical nuns.
The 1961 sonics are a model of vividness and clarity, letting you hear all the details of Messian’s timbres (ondes, celesta, vibraphone). Never have I heard so distinctly piano and celesta at the beginning of the third movement. The downside is that it comes with with a bit of harshness also in Bernstein’s high-strung and relentless second movment, and in the softer passages you can hear a background rumble which I think is the sound of traffic outside the recording venue. But top felicity here is pianist Paul Jacobs. For all the legitimacy and technical capabilities of Messiaen’s wife Yvonne Loriod, I find Jacobs even more attentive and faithful to the details of articulation (great staccato playing in the first movement’s bird songs) and dynamics.
Still, there are some questionable features. The clear and vivid sonics expose the fact that some of the instruments simply don’t sound good. In the first movement the vibraphone is metallic and the Ondes Martenot sounds disagreeably pinched and without sensuousness. It also doesn’t stand out enough in the middle section of that same movement, where Messiaen instructs to give it equal importance as the solo violin; here, it is somewhat covered by the piano. In the middle, slow section of the third movement the celesta stands out artificially and without much subtlety, and in the same movement, with the return of the fast section (at 9:45), the Ondes Martenot is so garishly spotlighted that the trills written by Messiaen sound dangerously close to the typical sound effect in the horror movies from the 1940s. I doubt that it was the intention.
Some of the questionable choices are not the sound engineer’s but purely Lenny’s doing I’m afraid, like the very deliberate and pedestrian tempo he adopts in the middle and fast section of the first movement, failing to bring forth the desired contrast. He also lacks the ecstatic quality of Couraud in the (very few) slow passages of the second movement and in the middle, slow section of the third movement (between 3:52 and 9:45) – probably because it would have required holding back the tempo more than his chorus could sustain (the good side of that is that with Couraud’s tempos at least one of the piece should have been left out of the CD!). Maybe because of the sheer difficulty of those ever changing meters at a fast tempo, the second movement itself sounds almost grim and angry; go to Couraud, and you will hear exultant joy. In the slow and “mystical” section of the third movement, the chorus is not entirely homogeneous (it is written unisono and should really sound like one angelic voice).
Nothing shameful, but still this is a recording for the fan and collector of Bernstein (which I am) rather than for the fan of Messiaen. The latter should go to Couraud’s remake, a version that has the composer’s imprimatur and hasn’t been bettered.
I don’t have the score of Ligeti’s Atmospheres and haven’t done the same kind of comparative listening. Anyway, what a great piece! Frightening. And if it sounds that way under Lenny’s baton, then I’ll assume that it is well conducted. No wonder Kubrick used the music in 2001 (which was in 1968, of course – but every reader will know what I’m talking about…).
The other compositions are very typical of the avant-garde of their days, but, unlike Ligeti, not the avant-garde’s best output. The Feldman piece is pretty un-typical of its composer. First, it is short. Second, it sounds not at all like the “minimal” music Feldman is so fascinating for (about that, see my Feldman introductory page), but like your run-of-the-mill, unpalatable serial work in the manner of Milton Babbitt: many sonic events, apparently at random and without perceptible logic. Funny that Feldman’s composition should be called “Out of ‛Last Pieces’”. They are, I suppose, the last pieces he wrote in 1961: fortunately he moved on and wrote more! [March 2025 addition: in fact, they are the re-working of Feldman’s Last Pieces for piano from 1959, a “gesture” reproduced by Boulez when he belatedly orchestrated his early “Notations”]. I don’t hear much crescendo or diminuendo in Denisov’s “Crescendo e Diminuendo” but rather, like in Feldman’s piece, a series of distjointed sonic events. Each may be individually intriguing, but they don’t coalesce into a convincing whole [2025 addition: Incidentally, upon repost here of this old review, I noticed that Crescendo e Diminuendo was scored for harpsichord and twelve strings; surely the harpsichordist deserved credit, as did the pianist and “ondiste” in Messiaen’s Liturgie. But the information was not on the CD, not on Discogs.com, not even on the Bernstein discography hosted by the Bernstein Foundation. Fortunately, the New York Philharmonic hosts a thorough and marvelous digital archive, with an incredible documentation of all their concert. And sure, I found it: “1967 May 18, 19, 20 Subscription Season” (an all-Russian concert with Rodion Shchedrin’s Mischievous Folk Ditties – now available on the New York Phil’s commemorative set NYP 2004 “Bernstein Live!” vol. 1 see entry on Discogs.com -, Prokofiev’s Fourth Piano Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony), and the winner is… Joel Spiegelman! 
And coincidence has it that just the other day, I was listening again to Spiegelman’s immensely fun Bach Goldberg Variations on syntheziser on East West 90927-2 barcode 075679092724, see my review on Amazon.com pending repost here.]
On the other hand, I quite enjoyed Schuller’s Triplum – not an “easy” composition, and I suspect it would have more impact in the concert hall. 
The orchestra’s four improvisations aren’t bad at all, with the last one sounding even impressive. It’s really a case of the monkey painting a Picasso: call the improvisations a piece by Morton Feldman or Gunther Schuller, and nobody will question it, chances are they’ll even clap at the end. [2025 addition: it’s funny that the official Bernstein discography “authors” the Four Improvisations to “New York Philharmonic”, as if Bernstein had actually conducted the orchestra; I suuppose he just ushered them in and gave them free rein…]
Anyway warts and all, it is great to have these testimonies of Bernstein’s involvement with some of the most cutting-edge music of his time. There are 79 minutes of it on the disc, and it ain’t enough. Three stars for interpretations and works, and a fourth star to the memory of Bernstein.