At the start of lockdown, 2020, one way I survived was by immersing myself in music. I swam, deep diving, into a musical memory, already a guiding light, which lockdown only highlighted as a beacon.
As I had over years, I searched for a recording of the greatest concert of them all: the performance by Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic of Mahler’s 5th Symphony at the 1987 Proms in London. I had attended that concert, alone, as a nineteen-year-old, waiting long enough and early enough to be on the second standing row, right before the conductor’s podium, and found myself ten feet from genius. I had hoped ever since to hear it again.
And so again I searched, one snowy night in March 2020, and came up with gold and let out a yell of joy. Someone had uploaded their recording of the event, over thirty years later!
From then on, as lockdown spread to weeks and months, I immersed myself in Bernstein’s music. It swallowed hours of intense single-minded listening. Not only the treasured recording I’d found, but conducting clinics, rehearsals, other concerts whether Bernstein conducting, or playing and conducting. It was all fair game. Winter seeped away, accompanied by Appalachian Spring. And in the midst of difficulty, I recaptured the joy of that event thirty years before and brought its lessons fresh and urgent into the current crises.
The Proms
I had attended the Bernstein Prom almost by accident. Each year the 8-week season of daily classical Proms concerts are broadcast nightly on the BBC. Growing up in England it was impossible to miss their impact. But to be there in person is another experience altogether.
The name ‘Prom’ comes from the fact that rather than be formally seated as at most concerts, you can promenade, that is stand, and listen. Or more accurately, stand fairly close like sardines after a day of queueing for the privilege, but all for a negligible price. (Then a mere £2.50 to hear the greatest orchestras in the world. Now £6.00.)
My sights had been set on attending the raucous Last Night of the Proms, a party all its own. But to do so, a sheaf of tickets to the regular season’s concerts were required. Since I lived 100 miles from London, I simply attended the entire final week of the season. I had nobly saved a summer’s worth of dole money. With a pocket full of cash, I hopped on the train and stayed the week at various cheap youth hostels, able to afford only one extra meal each day.
And so, inadvertently, I found myself at what many consider the greatest Prom concert of them all. This would be Leonard Bernstein’s first appearance at the Proms, a mere three years before his death.
The Royal Albert Hall, London. Amanda Slater, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Did Bernstein have something to prove that night?
At the time of the concert, it had been fifteen years since he first coaxed the Vienna Philharmonic into accepting the music of Mahler which Hitler had banned them from playing. Recordings of tense rehearsals in 1972 show his frustration at their tentative playing. But they learned the power of this tempestuous symphonic composer. Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic went on to form an improbable but tight bond.
In 1987 they had performed the 5th Symphony all season and the Royal Albert Hall was one of many stops on their tour. But their mastery of the piece and the particular chemistry of musicians, composer, and conductor rose to a crescendo of perfection that night at the unique location of the Proms.
One power of the Proms is their accessibility. The affordability of the tickets and access to world-class music is a draw for the intensely interested but strapped for cash music lover and student. It is unusual for the passionate rather than the wealthy to occupy the front rows. This leads to a famed respect between conductor and audience on any Proms night.
And what those front rows experienced that night was legendary. A critic later said, in his opinion, that night was the highlight of Bernstein’s conducting career.
Right before us at the podium, Bernstein coaxed and implored, demanded and commanded each disparate tempo, each arc of story, and laid the music bare, laid Mahler bare, and us in the process.
“I ask myself, why do I get so INVOLVED, so that I’m a WRECK after I finish a movement of a Mahler symphony?
I’m out of breath and drenched. I’m shaking. I have a headache. My stomach is up in my throat somewhere.
Why not just stand there and beat time and let all this happen by itself? And I realize, I can’t.
In the first place, I’m not sure all these things would happen unless I conducted it on a parallel with the extremes that are written into the score ...
Another reason is that I feel so deeply identified with it, I feel I’m convincing the orchestra of it all the time and I have to act out what I want to hear.”
My enduring memory of that night is the astonishment of witnessing this driven call to action right before me. And the moment at the conclusion of the concert.
We held our breath as the final notes fell away. Then a roar of approval burst forth from the audience of 5,000, at which Bernstein turned, drenched and spent, stretched wide his arms, and looked along the row of upturned faces before him, his hands open. “There,” his body said, “I have given you everything I have.”
And he had. The unalloyed cheering continued for at least fifteen minutes but the memory of it has lasted since.
Lava Flow
The spirit of our age is one of apologizing profusely for imperfection and Bernstein teemed with fault lines, but through his flawed life flowed an intense striving on behalf of music that opened the eyes, ears, and hearts of musician and audience alike.
Like lava flow, he could ignite.
To this day that concert is the single most extraordinary experience of my life. That proximity to the red hot lava flow of genius has been a spark ever since. Sometimes seemingly dormant, but never doused.
Does it Take a Pandemic?
Perhaps it took a pandemic to strip away the layers of dross, built up over years of obligations, between me and that passion. The live coal of intense life buried under busyness.
Dormant but not doused, myself, I have reignited the flame.
And if you dare immerse yourself, I invite you to listen to the recording, long lost to me, but available now, at the click of a button, below.
Jack Mitchell, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
“I’m not boasting that I understand Mahler better [than any other conductor] but I feel so close to it that very often I feel that I’ve written it myself.”
Mahler’s 5th, the Legendary Prom: Sept 10th, 1987
Royal Albert Hall, London
Further watching
It would be wonderful to watch Bernstein conducting the 1987 Proms’ concert! Only the audio is available, it appears, and I’m grateful for that.
There is however a wealth of video material from Bernstein’s fascinating 1970s rehearsals of Mahler with the Vienna Philharmonic and the resulting concerts.
“There’s no way to play three bars of Mahler without giving your all.
Every diminuendo, every pianissimo, is just as intense as every forte and accelerando.
Everything has to be done at FULL intensity.”