Following up the success of their first record for EMI, a coupling of two Aaron Copland's most popular ballet scores, Billy the Kid and Rodeo, both with a Western theme (EL270398-1, 7/86), Leonard Slatkin and the St Louis Symphony Orchestra here compile an equally well-matched collection of works by Leonard Bernstein, all of them eary and mostly jazz-base. With over an hour of music it makes a generous coupling—far more so than in Bernstein's own versions of these same pieces—and the recording, as on the Copland disc, is bright and forward with brass and percussion particularly clean and realistic.
That alone should be enough recommendation, but for the devotee of Bernstein it has to be said very firmly that the Master himself at almost every point, as an interpreter of his own music, has the edge over his disciple. Next to Bernstein, whether in recordings for CBS with the Israel Philharmonic for DG in more recent years, Slatkin and the St Louis orchestra sound a degree too plain and literal. It is particularly odd to find Bernstein persuading Israel musicians to play with a genuinely American feeling for jazz syncopations, when a genuine American orchestra by comparison remains just a little stiff, but that is simply an extra tribute to the mastery of Bernstein as a conductor and persuader.
So the Candide Overture is here just a little metrical next to Bernstein (DG 2532 083, 7/83; CD 413 916-2GH) or equally next to Andre Previn (EMI ESDW720, 5/83), and the three dances from On the Town have less freedom and flair than with the composer (2532 052, 10/82; CD 415 966-2GH, 5/86). When they are a sort of extension to the Fancy Free story (also about three sailors on shore leave) they might have been placed immediately after, but evidently for musical contrast the record has the choreographic essay, Facsimile, in between, a more thoughtful, less ebullient inspiration. There you might argue that Slatkin's degree of reticence and the refinement of the St Louis orchestra's playing brings out the thoughtfulness more clearly, but even in that the biting intensity of Bernstein himself (2532 052, 10/82—not available on CD) has the edge over Slatkin in holding the attention.
The CD sound brings little advantage over the LP, being tranferred at a relatively low level. The CD, I see, is manufactured in the United States. On the second track I was disconcerted to find what sounded like an appalling surface noise, but then I was relieved to find it was simply a simulation of 78rpm surface hiss, when the opening blues song, ''Big Stuff'', is supposed to be heard from a juke-box. On Bernstein's Israel record (DG 2531 196, 2/80) he himself performs it, singing to his own piano accompaniment and with heavy echo-chamber distancing it is aptly sleazy-sounding. The St Louis device of having a woman blues singer with very heavy vibrato (Jean Kitrell) singing over manufactured hiss sounds much more contrived, less convincingly a juke-box sound. But whatever reservations have to be made in relation to Bernstein's own recordings, Slatkin's do certainly bring the clear advantages that I noted at the start.'