Richard Bratby

Talking down to God

Sincerity often is embarrassing. But Marin Alsop overcame the cringe factor in her performances of Bernstein’s Third and First symphonies

issue 18 November 2017

‘There is something enviable about the utter lack of inhibition with which Leonard Bernstein carries on,’ wrote the critic of the Boston Globe after the US première of Bernstein’s Third Symphony, Kaddish, in February 1964 — and looking at the forces arrayed at the Barbican, he had a point. In addition to the full LSO there was the London Symphony Chorus, a narrator, a solo soprano and the Tiffin Boys’ Choir.

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