Eyewitness 1944: Bernstein triumphant in a visit with the PSO
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Leonard Bernstein made headlines in 1943 when he became the first American to conduct the New York Philharmonic.
Adding to the drama was that Bernstein had learned just hours before the orchestra's Nov. 14 performance that he would have to fill in for veteran conductor Bruno Walter, who had become ill.
He was back on the front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette two months later when he conducted the world premiere of his "Jeremiah" Symphony with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
Reviewers for the Post-Gazette, The Pittsburgh Press and the Toledo Blade, the P-G's sister paper, all acclaimed both the work and Bernstein's energetic conducting. The concert was at the orchestra's home, Oakland's Syria Mosque.
"At the end, the audience, usually reticent about accepting new music, gave the conductor and soloist a large ovation and shouts of 'Bravo' were heard throughout the house," the P-G's Donald Steinfirst wrote on Jan. 29, 1944, the day after the performance.
"Mr. Bernstein's conducting is unlike anything I have seen," Toledo's Arthur Peterson wrote. "[It is] an indescribable combination of supplication, command, yearning and gestures."
Anticipating the future concerns of many other music critics, he expressed fear that Bernstein's acrobatics could put him in physical danger. "Someday he will destroy himself on the podium," he warned. "That is the only way of saying it."
"Jeremiah" is a three-movement work written in 1942 for a competition sponsored by the New England Conservatory of Music. It did not win. Bernstein was 23 when he completed the piece and 25 when he conducted the premiere here.
The first movement is said to represent the Prophet Jeremiah's admonishments of the Jewish people, and the P-G's Steinfirst found it the weakest part of the work. "Broad sonorities are employed, sometimes unsupported and on occasion thinly harmonized," he wrote.
First Published April 4, 2010 12:00 am
