Sentimental Work: Glenn Dicterow on Bernstein’s Serenade after Plato’s ‘Symposium’

I’d always overlooked Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade after Plato’s ‘Symposium’ until I was asked to perform it. It was recorded in 1956 by Isaac Stern and the Symphony of the Air, with the composer conducting, and though I owned that LP I hadn’t gotten around to listening to it. In 1985, when I’d been the New York Philharmonic’s concertmaster for five years, we heard that Lenny was going to come back to the orchestra as a guest conductor; he’d been away for around a decade because he needed some space, and there was a national tour coming up in the next year…