LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918-1990) THREE DANCE EPISODES FROM ON THE TOWN (1944) Scored for: piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, Eb clarinet, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, two horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano and strings Performance time: 11 minutes First Grant Park Orchestra performance: June 19, 1993, Kenneth Jean, conductor Not long after his conducting debut with the New York Philharmonic in November 1943, the 25-year-old Leonard Bernstein was approached by choreographer Jerome Robbins to write a ballet about sailors on leave in New York. This jazzy ballet, Fancy Free, premiered in April 1944 and helped to catapult Bernstein’s compositional career. Coming off the ballet’s success, Bernstein and Robbins decided to turn it into a full musical called On the Town. They enlisted the help of Bernstein’s young friends Betty Comden and Adolph Green to write the book and lyrics. In fact, Bernstein and Green worked on the musical together while they were both recuperating from surgery in the same hospital—Bernstein for a deviated septum and Green for a tonsillectomy. They would often erupt in laughter and song, much to the chagrin and amusement of the attending nurses. On the Town, Bernstein’s first musical, retained only the basic plot of Fancy Free, centering on the amorous adventures of three sailors on 24-hour shore leave in New York City during World War II. The wartime romcom was an immediate success when it premiered in 1944, and MGM quickly bought the rights to make it into a movie starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, which was released in 1949. However, most of Bernstein’s original music was not retained in the film version. Bernstein chose three of the dance episodes from On the Town to form an orchestral suite, which premiered in 1946. Dance was naturally a central part of the musical due to the collaboration with Robbins. Like all of Bernstein’s dance music, the dance music in On the Town rose to a level of orchestral complexity never before seen on Broadway. In fact, one Boston critic wrote shortly after the premiere that Bernstein’s music was “an energetic blend of Stravinsky and Gershwin,” while veteran theater director George Abbott jokingly called it “that Prokofiev stuff.” The first dance episode is “The Great Lover.” In this scene, Gabey has fallen in love with a subway poster beauty queen dubbed “Miss Turnstiles.” In dogged pursuit of this idealized woman, Gabey falls asleep on the subway and dreams of sweeping her off her feet. The music in this episode reflects both Gabey’s naiveté and determination. The second episode, “Lonely Town—Pas de Deux,” takes a more melancholic turn as Gabey watches a fellow sailor seduce then abandon a girl in Central Park. He laments that without love, New York is just a lonely town. The final episode, “Times Square—1944,” presents a panoramic view of a bustling Times Square as the sailors embark on their night of fun. The most famous tune from the musical, “New York, New York, it’s a helluva town,” makes a brief cameo in this exuberant scene. In this moment, the music captures not only the sailors’ joi de vivre, but also that of the young composer soaking up his meteoric rise to stardom.
Week 3
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