Leonard Bernstein wrote more music for his ill-fated 1976 musical with Alan Jay Lerner, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, than for any of his other theater projects. The game plan behind A White House Cantata was to salvage a coherent concert theater work from all of the show’s existing versions. The result is an admirable reconstruction, put together with intelligence, continuity, and care. Wisely, the original pit-band orchestrations by Bernstein, Hershey Kay, and Sid Ramin are played as is, rather than being souped up for full symphonic forces. Many listeners will relish the idea of reviving a large-scale Bernstein score that has virtually been buried for the past 25 years. In essence, the critics got it right the first time around, although I’d upgrade their consensus from “bomb” to “interesting failure.” For starters, Lerner’s lyrics lack the energy, adult wit, and sly inspiration that characterize his best-known works. You can’t deny Bernstein’s free-flowing talent, which, according to one well-known American composer, “is worth twenty Sondheims”. But having not written a musical in almost 20 years, Bernstein’s inspiration seems to have been stymied by the very conventions he once revolutionized. The brash motives, sweeping ballads, peppy ensembles, and jagged syncopations that keep Wonderful Town, Candide, and West Side Story forever young here sound calcified, contrived, and self-conscious.
The reason for this is that Bernstein’s aesthetic choices neither address the needs of the book nor enhance the characters’ emotional states of mind. The recitative sequences, for instance, tell us less about the people on stage than Bernstein’s warmed-over Richard Strauss borrowings. Thomas Hampson and June Anderson muster up as much professionalism as they can as President and First Lady, singing beautifully but with little variety in character. The servants roles come off to more convincing effect, with Kenneth Tarver as Lud and Barbara Hendricks in marvelous form as Seena. Kent Nagano and the London Symphony musicians compensate in proficiency for what they lack in enthusiasm and pizzazz. Full texts are included.
