Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1918, Leonard Bernstein was a conductor, composer, author and lecturer who had a dramatic impact on the popular audience’s acceptance and appreciation of classical music. He had piano lessons as a boy and furthered his education in conducting, orchestration and piano at Harvard University, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer institute, Tanglewood.
Bernstein was appointed to his first conducting post in 1943, as Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic. On November 14, 1943, he substituted on a few hours notice for the ailing Bruno Walter at a Carnegie Hall concert, which was broadcast nationally on radio, receiving critical acclaim. Soon, orchestras worldwide sought him out as a guest conductor. He taught at Tanglewood for many years and was Music Director of the New York Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969.
Bernstein’s first large-scale work, Symphony No. 1 (1943), was first performed with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 1944 and received the New York Music Critics’ Award. Other major compositions by Bernstein include Symphonies No.2 and 3, “Mass: A Theater Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers,” commissioned for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971. Ballets for which he wrote the music include Fancy Free (1944) and Facsimile (1946).
Bernstein also contributed substantially to the Broadway musical stage with many productions, including On The Town (1944), Wonderful Town (1953), and West Side Story (1957). He received many honors and awards including the Kennedy Center Honors (1980), the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (1981), and eleven Emmy® Awards for televised concerts such as the “Young People’s Concerts.”
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Sonata for Clarinet and Piano
Leonard Bernstein wrote his Sonata for Clarinet and Piano between 1941 and 1942, during his time at the Curtis Institute of Music and a summer residency at Tanglewood. It holds the distinction of being Bernstein’s very first published piece of music.
The two-movement chamber work is famously dedicated to his close friend, the clarinettist David Oppenheim. It received its world premiere on April 21, 1942, at the Institute of Modern Art in Boston, featuring David Glazer on clarinet and Bernstein himself on the piano.
MUSIC
By Peter Hellstrom
U.W.A. Thursday Lunchtime Recital
16 September 1965
The free lunch-time concert at 1.10pm at the University next Thursday will be given in the undercroft of Winthrop Hall. The performers will be clarinettist Jack Harrison, cellist Louis Mojzer and pianist Stephen Dornan. The programme will be Sonata in E flat major Op. 120 No. 2 for Clarinet by Brahms, Sonata (1934) for Cello and Piano by Shostakovich, and the
Sonata for Clarinet and Piano by Leonard Bernstein.
1965
EXPRESSION IN BRAHMS TRIO
By Sally Trethowan
Much of Brahms later music is valedictory in sentiment, and the trio for Piano Clarinet and Cello Op. 114 is typical of his last works. The major item in yesterday’s free lunchtime concert in Winthrop Hall, this work was performed expressively by Stephen Dornan (piano) Jack Harrison (clarinet) and Louis Mojzer (cello). Mr Dornan’s realisation of the full textured piano part which lies mainly in the middle and lower registers of the instrument demonstrated his deep understanding of and affinity for Brahms’s chamber music. Mr Harrison played the clarinet line with a poignancy and sweetness that echoed in sentiment the autumnal sadness of the cello part effectively realised by Mr Mozer. To open the program Mr Dornan and Mr Harrison played the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano by American Leonard Bernstein, a man famed as composer, conductor, concert pianist, scholar and expert on Bach and jazz. The first of the two movements was a romantic outpouring of song which, however, adroitly sidestepped both the banal and the sentimental. The second was a delightful capricious movement strongly flavoured with jazz rhythms. Here the clarinet chatted loquaciously, emphasising its arguments with strongly accented syncopations till it finally deemed to defeat the piano with sheer ebullience. After this Mr. Dornan in an expert display on the piano played three highly coloured pieces from Mihaud’s “Saudades do Brazil”, music that alternatively swayed and exploded with the ferocity of a tropical storm. [1]
| 16.9.1965 | Leonard Bernstein Clarinet Sonata (1942) AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE? PERTH PREMIERE | Jack Harrison (clarinet) Stephen Dornan (piano) | Free lunchtime, Winthrop Hall Undercroft, University of Western Australia |
[1] The West Australian Friday September 10 1965