Good on Chandos for tapping so quickly into the huge potential of Leonard Slatkin’s budding relationship with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. They’re learning to speak American quicker than we might have imagined. There’s something about the atmosphere of this disc – and in particular the performance of the Second Symphony‚ The Age of Anxiety – that sets it apart. That‚ for me‚ is as good an indication as any that we’ve somehow wriggled between the notes and got inside the composer’s head. The Age of Anxiety begins with one of Bernstein’s most memorable ideas: two lonely clarinets in a long echo­tone duet. The sound of urban isolation if ever we heard it. Get the feeling behind this right and you’re all set: Bernstein’s Auden­inspired ‘dream odyssey’ is as much about Bernstein – the loneliest of gregarious men – as anybody. This ‘journey’ – meaning life – is essentially one he makes alone (don’t we all). And composition – a lonely business – is a good metaphor for that. So Bernstein’s two sets of seven variations on no particular theme act as a kind of stream of consciousness through his dark night of the soul. It might be Lenny himself at the piano making it through the night with us. Actually it’s James Tocco wearing Lenny’s personality like a perfectly tailored tuxedo – supple‚ mercurial‚ capricious‚ and oh‚ so poetic. He and Slatkin really catch the haunted film noir fantasy of the piece‚ the kind of piece which really can pull a torch song out of a tone row. Playing and recording are first rate with the percussive intricacies of the jazzy ‘Masque’ (and especially the distinctive colour of the harp writing) beautifully realised. You feel like you’ve arrived somewhere at the close. You may even feel a little like longshoreman Brando – beaten but not bowed – making that long proud walk at the close of On the Waterfront. The parallels won’t have escaped Bernstein when he came to write that score a few years later. The soul­searching in Symphony No 1‚ Jeremiah‚ is of a more conventional nature. Bernstein is looking to be Shostakovich in the piccolo­topped passage for winds about five minutes into the ‘Prophecy’ – except that he exercises a preference for screwed­up harmonies over implaccable unisions in the big declamations. The scherzo – ‘Profanation’ – with its audacious syncopations and peeling monotonal trumpets doesn’t go into orbit as it does in Bernstein’s New York Philharmonic recording. Clearly it’s not yet in the blood and under the fingers of the BBC orchestra. That’ll come. But Michelle DeYoung is by turns majestic‚ imperious‚ and quietly reflective in her Hebrew lament for Jerusalem. The sustained climax plunging to tremulous basses for the words ‘Wherefore dost Thou forget us forever’ is as thrilling as ever. Which leaves the party game: Divertimento. A good time had by all. The notes B­C (Boston Centenary) get us going. Puns and allusions follow. Go figure.