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Bernstein Symphonies Number One "Jeremiah" and Two "The Age of Anxiety" Slatkin, BBC Symphony Orchestra LEONARD SLATKIN CONDUCTS BERNSTEIN’S SYMPHONIES 1 & 2 Leonard Bernstein: Jeremiah (Symphony No. 1); The Age of Anxiety (Symphony No. 2); Divertimento for Orchestra. Michelle DeYoung, mezzo-soprano; James Tocco, piano. BBC Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin, conductor. (Chandos CHAN 9889) Leonard Slatkin received his bachelor’s degree from Juilliard in 1967, studying orchestral conducting with Jean Morel. Slatkin last led the Juilliard Orchestra in the spring of 1999 in a gala including Itzhak Perlman and Audra McDonald. Formerly the music director of the St. Louis Symphony for 17 seasons, Slatkin has helmed the National Symphony of Washington since 1996. He also became chief conductor of the BBC Symphony in 2000, the orchestra heard in this new recording. Slatkin has long been a persuasive interpreter of the music of Leonard Bernstein. Upon Bernstein’s death, the New York Philharmonic invited Slatkin to conduct Jeremiah at memorial concerts. When Slatkin was later asked by RCA to tape Jeremiah, however, he self-effacingly demurred and insisted that RCA reissue Bernstein’s own historic 1945 St. Louis Symphony recording instead. Now Slatkin has finally recorded Bernstein’s first two symphonies: Jeremiah (1942), and The Age of Anxiety (1949), in his own right. The Age of Anxiety, with its passages of symphonically sublimated jazz, is a difficult work for European orchestras to perform idiomatically. Slatkin and the BBC Symphony have no such problem, aptly conveying its moods of introspection and exultation. Pianist James Tocco, who has recorded Bernstein’s complete piano music, plays his prominent part with the requisite velocity, panache, and swing. In Jeremiah, Michelle DeYoung sings the “Lamentation” poignantly. The performers are abetted by Chandos’s wonderfully involving and realistic recorded sound. A year before his death, Bernstein confided to an interviewer that he wanted to be remembered not for his conducting but for his music. Others, he felt, could conduct magnificently, “but nobody, for better or worse, can write my music except me.” Although the compositions of his final years—such as the Divertimento half-hidden on this CD (it is not even mentioned on the front cover)—are disappointingly thin, his first two symphonies are arguably his finest serious works. This recording demonstrates that Slatkin can conduct them as convincingly as their composer. Imprint: Chandos Cover: CHAN 9889 ISBN/ID: 095115988923 onhand: 1 Price: $ 17.99