Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Leonard Bernstein’s MASS is an audacious hybrid that’s messy, grandiose, and beguiling

• By drediman
• July 18, 2018
• No Comments

Leonard Bernstein’s “MASS” at David Geffen Hall, an offering at the 2018 Mostly Mozart Festival.

Last night, I caught Leonard Bernstein’s audacious, rarely performed MASS – one of the headline offerings, and a mammoth undertaking, at this year’s Mostly Mozart Festival – at David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center. There’s no denying the unfiltered grandiosity of the piece; it’s an extravagant hybrid between a large scale classical music concert and a theatrical narrative with a good dosage of dance and avant-garde shadings. The 1971 piece was commissioned to open the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., where it received wildly polarizing reviews.

MASS can be faulted for many things, and it was. Musically, the piece is schizophrenic – some would say vulgar and pretentious – hopping between the classical liturgical mass structure and an unpredictable hodgepodge of contemporary styles (pop, jazz, Broadway, rock, Eastern European folk music, art songs, and so on!). However, for me, it’s precisely this quality that I found beguiling, at times irresistibly thrilling. This messiness mirrors the crisis of faith that the Mass’s Celibrant character and the community at large are faced with, which escalates in lock step with the Catholic ritual’s progression, often times in jarring juxtaposition. Such existential dilemmas shouldn’t be pat (quite on the contrary), and Bernstein’s pulsating, powerful – but at times elusive and frustrating – score takes this notion to heart. Together with the spectacle and pageantry of the staging, I ultimately found MASS to be dramatically and theatrically urgent, and an emotionally overwhelming event. In theme, scale, and immersiveness (but definitely not musically), the piece oddly calls to mind Wagner’s Parsifal.

The production that’s currently in town, dynamically directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer and choreographed by Laurel Jenkins on an enormous scale, has been making its rounds this year. It premiered in Los Angeles under the baton of colorful superstar conductor Gustavo Dudamel (helming the L.A. Philharmonic), and it subsequently traveled to Philadelphia where the piece was presented under the guidance of sensational maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin (leading the very fine Philadelphia forces). Here, Mostly Mozart Festival Music Director Louis Langrée conducts the piece, and he does so with focus and drive – exactly the kind of gutsy approach Bernstein’s sprawling work needs to give it shape. As the Celebrant, the magnetic baritone Nmon Ford was everything I could have wished for. Vocally, he was arresting, and his portrayal of a man in dire crisis was utterly convincing. Special mention also must go to boy soprano Tenzin Gund-Morrow, who’s voice pierced through Bernstein’s excessively eclectic score with its unadulterated beauty. The last performance is tonight, and I urge you to make up your own mind about this controversial, fascinating, and inarguably singular piece.

RECOMMENDED

BERNSTEIN MASS
Classical Music
Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra at David Geffen Hall
1 hour, 50 minutes (without an intermission)
Through July 18