BERNSTEIN, L.: Mass (Sykes, Wulfman, Morgan State University Choir, Peabody Children's Chorus, Baltimore Symphony, Alsop)

We Say...

Review by Jayson Greene

Nothing about Leonard Bernstein was small-scale. Not his 11 years as the most dynamic music director in the history of the New York Philharmonic; not Broadway masterpieces like Candide and West Side Story; and least of all, the Mass — his wild-eyed 1971 magnum opus that repurposed the standard liturgical Mass to encompass '60s rock, blues laments, medieval choirs, choogling Booker T organs, Paul Simon lyrics, twelve-tone high modernism, bongos and kazoos all together in one of Lenny's signature bear hugs. Its premiere was the definition of big-time: the commission came directly from Jackie Onassis to commemorate the opening of the Kennedy Center for the Arts.

Bernstein seemed to respond to this platform as a kind of a grand dare: just how big can I go? He was plagued all his life by the Gershwin Syndrome — Am I a Broadway composer or a "serious" composer? — which was compounded by an equally acute case of Mahler's Disease — "Am I a Composer or a Conductor?" The first problem was metaphysical, the second logistical, but they twined around each other to form a massive and intractable identity crisis. And Mass, in its gloriously incomprehensible sprawl, is the howling catharsis.

We are plunged into mayhem from the first minute, with overlapping pre-recorded voices singing the "Kyrie" section of the standard Mass like a group of escaped mental patients while drums tumble and crash. After a minute, the chaos is cut short by a strummed G chord on a guitar, a teacher's upheld hand for the class's attention. And then, one of Bernstein's tremendously generous melodies starts pouring in: "A Simple Song." Here, in Naxos's fine recording with Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, it is the rich-voiced baritone Jubilant Sykes, who is magnetic throughout as the Celebrant, the central figure in Bernstein's ambiguous mass. The yearning vocal melody traces the same grand, clean lines as Bernstein's "Somewhere," but unlike Tony and Maria, this man knows exactly where his place is: in the warm glow of his love of the Lord.

Almost as soon as this brief moment of calm settles in, though, Bernstein goes about snuffing it in increasingly rude ways — first, a jazzy little vocalise. Then, a whirling dervish of a klezmer clarinet. And then: kazoos. It calls to mind one of those old Chuck Jones cartoons, where Bugs Bunny finds a series of increasingly outrageous ways to blow up Daffy Duck. Things only grow wilder: Hallelujah choruses set as scrappy ragtime; brass bands colliding with choirs; massive, doom-laden tone clusters in the strings, like the angry ghost of Schoenberg. All the while, the text grows more anguished, angst-ridden, and finally angry. This is the real story of the mass: the struggle to make sense of yourself when you are a screaming mass of contradictions; how to maintain faith in simple things when the world only grows increasingly complicated and overwhelming.

Marin Alsop, the celebrated conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, has the sort of empathy for this schizophrenic work that few living conductors can claim, as she is herself a protégée of Bernstein. This recording features brilliant singing from the Morgan State University University Choir and heroic playing from the BSO, but the story, as always, is with the Mass itself, an irreverent, flawed masterwork that is, as was Lenny, vibrantly, exquisitely alive.