Leonard Bernstein was President of Rome’s Santa Cecilia Academy Orchestra for the last seven years of his life and now, on the centenary of his birth, the orchestra and its Music Director Antonio Pappano say ‘Grazie Lenny!’ by recording the three symphonies for Warner Classics.

They were joined by the contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux (Cassandre on the Gramophone Award-nominated Erato recording of Berlioz’s Les Troyens) for the First Symphony, Jeremiah, Gramophone’s 2017 Young Artist of the Year, Beatrice Rana for the Second Symphony, The Age of Anxiety, and Nadine Sierra and Dame Josephine Barstow for the Third, Kaddish. The Santa Cecilia orchestra’s Principal Clarinet Alessandro Carbonare provides a mouthwatering extra in Bernstein’s Prelude, Fugue and Riffs.

The two-CD set is out now and is Gramophone’s Recording of the Month for the September issue.

Gramophone’s James Jolly went to the concerts and reports back in a podcast while Warner Classics was on hand with its cameras to glimpse behind the scenes…