The New York Philharmonic’s former concertmaster recalls how he first learnt the solo part of Bernstein’s Serenade after Plato’s ‘Symposium’ before a national tour with the composer conducting

Glenn Dicterow 1 cr Chris Lee

Photo: Chris Lee

Glenn Dicterow

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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. The management asked me if I’d be interested in being the soloist for the Serenade, which was the first time I’d even thought of listening to it! When I put on the record, I fell in love with it straight away; it was a revelation, and certainly the best piece by him that I’d ever heard. So I said yes without hesitation.

I only had around six months before the first performance, and of course I also had to rehearse and perform with the Philharmonic as normal, plus I was teaching. So I needed the whole six months to study it, as it’s a terrifically awkward piece to learn. There are so many double-stops throughout this work, as well as huge leaps up and down the fingerboard. Maybe that’s why it hadn’t been a popular choice up until that time, even though it had been written 30 years before. But the only way to perform it successfully is really to feel as if it’s part of your DNA, so I sank my teeth into it and didn’t give up.

Glenn Dicterow with Bernstein

Photo: David Rentas/courtesy NY Phil Shelby White & Leon Levy Digital Archives

‘You have to feel like it’s part of your DNA’: Glenn Dicterow with Bernstein in 1986

I remember when Lenny arrived for the first rehearsal: he went to each of the section leaders and kissed them, then stood at the podium, looked out at us – and said, ‘Hang on a minute; who is this orchestra?’ As he’d been away from the New York Philharmonic for a decade, he knew hardly any of the members! But the orchestra was really attentive that day, and he found them very malleable. Also, the Serenade had just come back into the public consciousness because of the notorious Tanglewood concert with Midori as soloist with Lenny conducting the Boston Symphony. In the fifth movement she broke her E string, quickly grabbed the concertmaster’s Stradivari, broke that E string, and finished the performance on the associate concertmaster’s Guadagnini. The story made the front page of the New York Times and it became known as a difficult piece – although I’m not sure why it should cause two E strings to break!

When I listened to the Stern recording, I felt he approached it in a more neo-Classical manner. I had my own interpretation, which was more Romantic, and I played it that way in rehearsal. At one point Lenny took me aside and said, ‘Look, you’re putting in all these sexy slides; it should be more austere.’ I said, ‘I feel the piece in a different way. I know it’s based on Plato’s Symposium but it inspires me to give it my own interpretation.’ So he let me perform it just that way. And near the end of the tour, just after we’d performed the big tutti section before the last movement starts, he whispered to me: ‘This is the best [expletive] piece I ever wrote!’ So I like to think he was happy with my interpretation.

One other thing I recall: before the start of the tour, I was interviewed by the New York Times, and was asked what it was like working with Lenny. Jokingly I said, ‘Well, he looks like a great kisser!’ Of course they went ahead and printed it. Then the next time I saw him was at Tanglewood: the door flew open, Lenny came straight up to me and planting a great big kiss on my lips! He followed up with: ‘Well, you said I looked like a good kisser and I didn’t want to disappoint you!’

INTERVIEW BY CHRISTIAN LLOYD

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