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What an amazing double bill the LSO offered for the start of its Barbican season under the direction Antonio Pappano: Aaron Copland’s Symphony No 3, with it haunting and thrilling Fanfare for the Common Man and Leonard Bernstein Symphony No 3 Kaddish. This first night of the programme offered two composers who are admired for their epic vision and who, in quite different ways, represent the great American modernist wave.
Copland’s desire was to develop an expansive ‘American’ musical landscape, which is perhaps best known in his ballets Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring. Bernstein is celebrated mainly as a populist, most famous for his musicals On the Town and West Side Story. However, Bernstein also longed to be considered as a serious composer. This wish was certainly realised by his Kaddish which is a disturbing musical poem on the grandest of scales. Here he mixes the spoken word with full orchestra, choir, soprano and children’s voices, in a most daring interrogation of the God who must not be questioned.
Bernstein’s original text, powerfully, delivered by octogenarian, Felicity Palmer, was one of the most audacious I have heard in a concert hall. She has immense power and is magnetic. Palmer gave us Bernstein’s furious conversation with God asking him to reverse roles with ‘man’ and make a better job of his creation this time. Bernstein’s chutzpah is breath-taking.
At the 1963 Tel Aviv premiere, the symphony was played by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. It was a huge success. Bernstein wanted a woman to play the narrator. He chose 75-year-old Hannah Rovina who had made her reputation as Leah in The Dybbuk; the first stage play to have a woman speaking with a male voice. Demanding that a woman represent ‘man’ provokes this Kaddish as a double chutzpah. Not only does it suggest that God got it wrong; it challenges the tradition of only men being allowed to recite kaddish at orthodox funerals.
Kaddish has a playful irreverence to it. This is a complex religious and anti-religious work. Rather like talmudic debate, there is always the sense of deep intellectual questioning. Bernstein’s symphony is textually and musically multi-layered with its jagged rhythms and its mix of tonal and atonal.
Despite its epic scale, it also contains moments of Jewish humour as the speaker asks God if she has hurt him before she tells him of his mistake in ‘creating Man in your own image’. It suggests that she/’man’ is speaking kaddish for God himself. Kaddish exposes the depth of Bernstein’s artistry and his struggle with his own Jewish identity. The Orchestra, under Pappano’s dynamic direction, gave us the voice of Bernstein in all its tones and tortured feelings. It is magnificent.
London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican
September-December 2025
Julia Pascal
What an amazing double bill the LSO offered for the start of its Barbican season under the direction Antonio Pappano: Aaron Copland’s Symphony No 3, with it haunting and thrilling Fanfare for the Common Man and Leonard Bernstein Symphony No 3 Kaddish. This first night of the programme offered two composers who are admired for their epic vision and who, in quite different ways, represent the great American modernist wave.
Copland’s desire was to develop an expansive ‘American’ musical landscape, which is perhaps best known in his ballets Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring. Bernstein is celebrated mainly as a populist, most famous for his musicals On the Town and West Side Story. However, Bernstein also longed to be considered as a serious composer. This wish was certainly realised by his Kaddish which is a disturbing musical poem on the grandest of scales. Here he mixes the spoken word with full orchestra, choir, soprano and children’s voices, in a most daring interrogation of the God who must not be questioned.
Bernstein’s original text, powerfully, delivered by octogenarian, Felicity Palmer, was one of the most audacious I have heard in a concert hall. She has immense power and is magnetic. Palmer gave us Bernstein’s furious conversation with God asking him to reverse roles with ‘man’ and make a better job of his creation this time. Bernstein’s chutzpah is breath-taking.
At the 1963 Tel Aviv premiere, the symphony was played by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. It was a huge success. Bernstein wanted a woman to play the narrator. He chose 75-year-old Hannah Rovina who had made her reputation as Leah in The Dybbuk; the first stage play to have a woman speaking with a male voice. Demanding that a woman represent ‘man’ provokes this Kaddish as a double chutzpah. Not only does it suggest that God got it wrong; it challenges the tradition of only men being allowed to recite kaddish at orthodox funerals.
Kaddish has a playful irreverence to it. This is a complex religious and anti-religious work. Rather like talmudic debate, there is always the sense of deep intellectual questioning. Bernstein’s symphony is textually and musically multi-layered with its jagged rhythms and its mix of tonal and atonal.
Despite its epic scale, it also contains moments of Jewish humour as the speaker asks God if she has hurt him before she tells him of his mistake in ‘creating Man in your own image’. It suggests that she/’man’ is speaking kaddish for God himself. Kaddish exposes the depth of Bernstein’s artistry and his struggle with his own Jewish identity. The Orchestra, under Pappano’s dynamic direction, gave us the voice of Bernstein in all its tones and tortured feelings. It is magnificent.
Julia Pascal © 2025.
By Julia Pascal • added recently on London Grip, music, performance • Tags: Julia Pascal, music, performance