BANG! BANG! The two opening E flat triads are shot from a cannon, and we are off on a wild ride. These are studio recordings, but you’d never believe it, for the performances explode with life. It was all accomplished on an incredible schedule: rehearsals and performances took place outdoors, at New York City’s Lewisohn Stadium; after the concerts the musicians schlepped their instruments 80 blocks downtown to Carnegie Hall to make the early-morning recordings... For several decades, the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York played an eight-week summer season at Lewisohn Stadium, way uptown at 136th Street. Beginning in 1951, the Philharmonic name was no longer used, even though most of its players still filled the chairs; 1953 concert programs list “Stadium Symphony Orchestra.”...

These recordings were made by the American Decca Company, which was already associated with Deutsche Grammophon. A few years later, Decca licensed the recordings to the Book-of-the-Month Club (a major cultural force in mid-century America), which then commissioned Bernstein to write and record a detailed analysis of each work. All were released on the Music Appreciation Series, each record jacket containing a 12-inch LP of the music and a 10-inch one for the analysis. They might have had the compact disc in mind, for these CDs, each of which includes a symphony and its analysis, average over 75 minutes apiece, with the Brahms reaching. The analysis of the “Eroica” does carry over onto the Dvořák disc.

Critics in 1954 complained that these performances were just like Koussevitzky’s, not realizing what an accolade they were bestowing on the young apprentice by equating him with his late mentor, one of the great conductors of all time. It is easy to find fault here: this “Eroica” lurches along; tempos are inconsistent and transitions can be awkward, perhaps due to splicing incongruous takes. Brass can be out of tune, and there is an exposed horn clam in the finale. The Funeral March alternates between nobility and grief. But such problems cannot diminish the vibrancy of the music-making. The “Eroica” drew the best from Bernstein; his 1964 Columbia stereo recording with the Philharmonic is similar to this one; rough spots have been smoothed over, but a bit of the vitality has leaked out in the process. It would no doubt be preferable for multiple hearings, but it doesn’t raise goose bumps the way this one does. The later DG recording with the Vienna Philharmonic retains much of the strength, but that orchestra’s velvet panache and acoustical surroundings make it seem less forceful.

Bernstein gives us a rapid, no-nonsense Brahms Fourth. Although it misses the depth and warmth of Bruno Walter’s superb monaural recording with the Philharmonic made just two years earlier, it is convincing in its own way and enormously impressive: this is no young conductor learning his trade, this is a master musician on the podium. The Fourth was the Brahms symphony Bernstein did best throughout his career (he often butchered the Second), as his two later recordings and three movements from separate Young People’s Concerts demonstrate. Only the finale—one of the great movements in the symphonic literature, and one of the most difficult to manage—shows any lack of consistency. One shakes one’s head in astonishment: Wow! Bernstein could play Brahms after all.

The “New World” was also one of Bernstein’s better fits. Which elicits a thought: did he choose which symphonies to play and record that summer, or did Decca? Was the rained-out Franck D Minor also scheduled to be recorded? Lenny’s 1962 stereo Columbia “New World,” now on a Sony super-audio CD, has remained many listeners’ recording of choice for four decades. In this 1953 performance, however, the Adagio introduction gets off to a rough start (better this than Stokowski’s slick surfaces), and the Allegro molto is rushed, fierce, and screechy. Still, there is no denying the youthful potency of the reading. The Largo is straightforward, never sentimental. The Scherzo is clean and clipped; the finale lumbers badly in places. Nevertheless, one can sense the feel Lenny had for this work and hear ideas that would coalesce so superbly a decade later. Several of the quiet passages in the finale are redolent of Václav Tazlich’s Czech Philharmonic; had Lenny been listening to their recordings?

Schumann’s Second may be the most difficult of standard-repertoire symphonies to bring off; in my experience only George Szell and Bernstein have succeeded, using opposite means: Bernstein sticking to the much maligned original orchestration, Szell doctoring up Mahler’s doctoring. Here is a 34-year-old conductor, perhaps in his first crack at the piece, and yet he gets almost everything right (there is an odd phrase in the Scherzo; it’s the same each time around, so it’s no accident). The first movement is wonderful, every bit as fine as Szell’s, which remained my favorite recording—of anything—throughout the 1960s. The Scherzo’s coda even outdoes Szell in vitality and panache. Bernstein can’t quite hold the line at a slow tempo in the Adagio, and the orchestra displays some tuning problems there. The young conductor digs hard into the finale; I prefer Szell’s effervescence, but this works nearly as well. On balance, Bernstein’s 1953 performance is in the same league with his two acclaimed Philharmonic recordings, from New York and Vienna. One can only marvel: how could he do that? At that age? Under those conditions?

Bernstein’s analyses are everything one could want—a great teacher at the top of his form. He uses both piano and recorded orchestral excerpts to illustrate his talks. Over and over, he finds a beautiful, memorable phrase to make his point; again and again we learn something new from him, just where we may have thought we already knew enough. He spends about 10 minutes on the introductory bars of the Schumann Second; I came away appreciating the music’s originality more than ever, even understanding the composer better. Although Bernstein praises Tchaikovsky, he sounds less than convinced, emphasizing the endless repetitions of scale passages throughout the “Pathétique;” I’m with you, Lenny. The analyses take from 21 minutes (Dvořák) to 39 (Brahms, Schumann); they are allotted from five to eight tracks apiece.

The Musical Appreciation LPs were strident and thin; brass sounded tinny, especially the solo horn, which was certainly not true of the Philharmonic’s James Chambers. DG’s engineers have done a great rescue job, making it all eminently listenable, on a par with many commercial recordings of the late mono era. The analyses sound even better; Lenny is sitting in the room with you. Michael Gray’s intelligent, interesting notes trace the conductor’s early career and his appearances at Lewisohn Stadium. I noticed one slip in the data provided: the “New World” runs 39:35, rather than the specified 37:35. The five discs are packed in a slim cardboard box, which sells at Naxos prices.

Bernstein went on to record each of these symphonies at least twice again, in the 1960s and 1980s. Most of his early commercial recordings had been of contemporary music—his own, plus that of Stravinsky, Ravel, and Blitzstein—so it is easy to understand the importance of this first-ever CD release as a documentation of his career. But historical considerations cannot overshadow the performances themselves: vital, urgent, they are every bit as thrilling as when they were new. If you prefer pristine studio recordings with every blip corrected, you won’t like these; if you go for live-performance recordings, you will find a world of elation and joy.

James H. North, FANFARE