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NOTESONTHEPROGRAM
BY JAMES M. KELLER, PROGRAM ANNOTATOR
The Leni and Peter May Chair
Overture to Candide
Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
Leonard Bernstein
he story of Leonard Bernstein’s musical
comedy — or operetta, or opera — Candide is convoluted and, in the end, not altogether happy, an unfortunate situation for an
ebullient, madcap work whose Overture positively sparkles. Voltaire is ultimately to blame
for the whole affair, since it was his novella
Candide, ou L’Optimisme (1759) that inspired
Bernstein to struggle for more than three
decades to find the perfect way to translate it
for the musical stage.
To Voltaire we owe the tale of the wideeyed hero Candide, whose travels to distant
points of the globe invariably turn into dismal misadventures, much though he may be
assured by his idealistic tutor, Doctor Pangloss,
that everything is for the best. Voltaire wrote
his novella as a charming and persuasive rebuttal to the German philosopher Gottfried
Wilhelm von Leibnitz’s metaphysical assertion
that “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” This struck Voltaire as palpably
absurd. What about blatant violence, Voltaire
asked. What about shipwrecks? What about
the Spanish Inquisition? Candide has to deal
with them all in the course of this tale, and by
the time he gets back to his native Westphalia
he has become a wiser, if more cynical, young
man, intent on finding happiness where he
can, content in just making his garden grow.
In the fall of 1953, author Lillian Hellman
suggested teaming up with Bernstein to develop a stage work based on Candide. By January 1954, Bernstein was firmly committed to
T
IN SHORT
Born: August 25, 1918, in Lawrence,
Massachusetts
Died: October 14, 1990, in New York City
Works composed and premiered: Candide
was composed 1954–56, with Hershy Kay assisting with the orchestration; and frequently revised; previews began October 29, 1956, at the
Colonial Theatre in Boston; the show opened on
Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on December 1 of that year. West Side Story was composed 1955–57; Bernstein assembled the
Symphonic Dances in 1961, overseeing orchestration carried out by Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal;
dedicated “To Sid Ramin, in friendship”; West
Side Story was premiered on August 19, 1957,
at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C; Symphonic Dances was premiered on February 13,
1961, with Lukas Foss conducting the New
York Philharmonic.
New York Philharmonic premieres and most
recent performances: Overture to Candide premiered January 26, 1957, with the composer
conducting; most recently performed May 23,
2013, Case Scaglione, conductor. Symphonic
Dances from West Side Story most recently
played February 18, 2014, in Taipei, Taiwan, Alan
Gilbert, conductor
Estimated durations: Overture to Candide,
ca. 5 minutes; Symphonic Dances from West
Side Story, ca. 24 minutes
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the project, which he initially envisioned as a
full-scale, three-act opera. Hellman began fashioning Voltaire’s volume into a book for the
show, and John Latouche and Richard Wilbur
were enlisted to pen the lyrics, although Hellman, Dorothy Parker, and Bernstein himself
all contributed to the script. Candide opened in
New York on December 1, 1956, and played
for 73 performances at the Martin Beck Theatre — long enough to have proved in some
measure respectable (and certainly long
enough to pique the interest of many sophisticated music lovers), but not long enough to
be considered a success by any stretch of
Broadway’s imagination.
In the course of later emendations Candide
was transformed considerably. Hellman did not
allow her book to be used for the 1973 version staged by Hal Prince at the Chelsea Theatre Center, so on that occasion a new libretto,
reduced to a single act from the original two,
was created by Hugh Wheeler, with Stephen
Sondheim joining Wilbur, Latouche, and
Bernstein on the list of the show’s lyricists. Unfortunately, some marvelous musical numbers
needed to be omitted for that incarnation of
the show. Permutations, combinations, and revisions of either or both of those two versions
continued through Candide’s uncertain history,
some emphasizing the score’s operatic elements, others its musical comedy streak. Bernstein was directly involved in at least seven
versions of Candide, none of which proved definitive, although each had his blessing, at least
provisionally. In 1989 the composer led a concert performance in London — in a version
happily preserved on recordings — that stands
as his last sign-off on the theatrical work that
had eluded him for 33 years.
Through all the turmoil, Candide’s Overture remained essentially untouched. Why
change it? From the outset it was a popular,
perfect piece of bubbling optimism and
knowing skepticism. At least in this Overture
Bernstein achieved the flavor he seems to
have sought for the rest of the piece. In the
course of 1956 Bernstein scaled up the Overture‘s orchestration for a full symphony orchestra, and in this guise he introduced it
as a stand-alone work with the New York
Connecting Overture to Opera
Bernstein’s Candide Overture prefigures the show by drawing
principally on two vocal melodies that are prominent in the
stage work. Following some can-can material and a theme
that, in the show, occurs at the destruction of Candide’s native Westphalia, we hear a tender (though swiftly flowing) tune
that will later resurface as the love duet “O Happy We,” sung
by Candide and his girlfriend, Cunegonde. Bernstein had originally intended “O Happy We” as a duet for the characters of
Tony and Maria to sing in another show/operetta/opera that
was gestating at the same time — but West Side Story is a
different story altogether. Near the Overture’s end, after many
a musical joke, Bernstein tips his hat to Rossini and has the
orchestra repeat over and over, louder and louder, a little tune
extracted from Cunegonde’s aria “Glitter and Be Gay.”
Kristin Chenoweth (left), as Cunegonde, and Patti LuPone, as The
Old Lady, in the Philharmonic’s 2004 staged production of Candide
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Philharmonic on January 26, 1957. Within
two years it would be played by almost 100
orchestras, rapidly becoming his most frequently performed symphonic composition.
As early as 1949, Bernstein and his friends
Jerome Robbins (the choreographer) and
Arthur Laurents (the librettist) batted around
the idea of creating a musical retelling of
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, set amid the
tensions of rival social groups in modern
New York City. The project took a long time
to find its eventual form. An early version involving the doomed love affair between a
Jewish girl and a Catholic boy on New York’s
Lower East Side (tentatively titled East Side
Story) was altered to reflect the more up-todate social issue of gang warfare. Much of the
composition was carried out more or less
concurrently with Bernstein’s work on his
operetta Candide. It was while working on
these projects, in November 1956, that Bernstein was named Joint Principal Conductor
of the New York Philharmonic, an appointment that not only revivified a relationship
with the Orchestra that had been dormant
for the preceding few years, but also placed
him in a position to succeed Dimitri
Mitropoulos as the Philharmonic’s Music Director, an eventuality that would take place
in September 1958.
As the production of West Side Story
moved into the home stretch it was beset
with several crises. Cheryl Crawford, the producer, got cold feet about what she termed “a
show full of hatefulness and ugliness,” but her
partner, Roger Stevens, jumped in to ensure
that the project would continue. Also, the
young Stephen Sondheim, who had been
brought on as lyricist, snagged the interest of
From the Digital Archives – A Valentine for Lenny
The World Premiere of the Symphonic Dances from West Side
Story took place at a special Valentine concert for Leonard Bernstein on February 13, 1961. The New York Philharmonic was in an
extremely celebratory mood, and pulled out all the stops to honor
its then Music Director with a program of his own music, a tribute
that was said to have been reserved previously for the likes of
Beethoven, Brahms, and sometimes Wagner. Bernstein sat in the
first tier box for the concert at Carnegie Hall while his good friend
Aaron Copland led the opening work — the Overture to Candide.
Lukas Foss then took over the podium, conducting the Symphonic
Dances premiere — with its “Mambo!” shout out by the musicians.
The New York World Telegram reported that the “work revealed
what new strength and vitality Mr. Bernstein had brought to Broadway,” as well as to the symphonic concert hall. It was a time of
momentous expectations; the Orchestra had announced the previous week that Bernstein’s contract would be extended for another seven years, filming for the movie version of West Side
Story was underway, and Symphonic Dances was a hit.
Program cover for the special concert, 1961
To read a Philharmonic contributor’s Valentine message to Leonard Bernstein and the
Orchestra, scan here or visit the New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives at
archives.nyphil.org.
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his friend Harold Prince to be involved as a
producer. To everyone’s amazement, Robbins
announced at the 11th hour that he would
rather spend his time directing than choreographing the show, thereby jeopardizing
Prince’s participation; in the end, Robbins was
persuaded to stay on as choreographer and
was granted an unusually long rehearsal period as an inducement.
On August 19, 1957, West Side Story opened
in a tryout run in Washington, D.C., with a
host of government luminaries in attendance.
(During the intermission Bernstein ran into
Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who
was in tears.) It proved a solid hit when it
reached Broadway the next month, running
for 772 performances, just short of two years.
After that it embarked on a national tour and
eventually made its way back to New York in
1960 for another 253 performances, after
which it was released as a feature film in 1961.
“The radioactive fallout from West Side Story
must still be descending on Broadway this
morning,” wrote Walter Kerr, critic of the Herald Tribune, in the wake of the opening in New
York, and one might argue that his assumption remains true nearly six decades later. West
Side Story stands as an essential, influential
chapter in the history of American theater, and
its engrossing tale of young love against a
background of spectacularly choreographed
gang warfare has found a place at the core of
American culture.
In the opening weeks of 1961 Bernstein
revisited his score and extracted nine sections
to assemble into what he called the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. The
impetus was a gala fund-raising concert for
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the New York Philharmonic’s pension fund,
to be held the evening before Valentine’s Day.
The event was styled as an overt love-fest, celebrating not only his involvement with the
orchestra up to that time but also the fact that
he had agreed that month to a new contract
that would ensure his presence for another
seven years. In the interest of efficiency, Bernstein’s colleagues Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal,
who had just completed the orchestration for
the film version of West Side Story, suggested
appropriate sections of the score to Bernstein,
who re-ordered them in a new, uninterrupted
sequence derived from a strictly musical rationale. Two of the most popular favorites of
the musical’s songs are found in the pages of
the Symphonic Dances: “Somewhere” and
“Maria” (in the Cha-Cha section).
Instrumentation: Overture to Candide calls
for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two
B-flat clarinets plus E-flat clarinet and bass
clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon,
four horns, two trumpets, three trombones,
tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, snare drum,
tenor drum, bass drum, harp, and strings.
Symphonic Dances from West Side Story employs three flutes (one doubling piccolo), two
oboes and English horn, two clarinets, E-flat
clarinet and bass clarinet, two bassoons
and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass
drum, congas, drum set, guiro, police whistle,
tambourine, wood block, bongo drums, cowbell, finger cymbals, maracas, tenor drum, triangle, xylophone, chime, cymbals, gong,
orchestra bells, timbales, vibraphone, harp,
celeste, and piano.