Stockbridge — The Berkshire Chamber Players gave the New England premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s “Music for String Quartet” at the Congregational Church on Saturday, May 4, in a concert to benefit Stockbridge Library. Nina Bernstein Simmons was on hand to introduce her father’s piece, the discovery of which, years ago (a single movement), lit a fire under retired Boston Symphony librarian John Perkel, who jumped through all the hoops necessary to getting the unpublished score performed in 2021 at Tanglewood’s Linde Center. But that was before Garth Sunderland of the Leonard Bernstein Office discovered a second movement of Bernstein’s student piece at the Library of Congress just months after the Tanglewood premiere.
Saturday’s performance included both movements, and it was a revelation. It was like a play date with the boys: Mozart and Bernstein, 16 and 18 years old, respectively, when they wrote the pieces on this program (which also included works by Beethoven and Schumann from their adult years). The adolescent Mozart’s Divertimento in F, K. 138, opened the concert, followed by Beethoven’s 12 Variations on a theme from Handel’s “Judas Maccabaeus,” WoO 45. Then came the Bernstein piece, followed by Schumann’s Quintet for piano and string quartet in E flat major, Op. 44.
What made Saturday’s performance revelatory was the way it uncovered secrets of Mozart’s and Bernstein’s earliest artistic development—secrets accessible to the Mozart scholar but perhaps not so much to students of Bernstein’s music. And while there is still much to discover about Bernstein’s time at Harvard circa 1936, hearing these two movements in performance opened up a window into the past and filled one small gap in our understanding of the man and his work.
Perhaps the most startling characteristic of “Music for String Quartet” is how much it sounds like Leonard Bernstein in his maturity. You needn’t like the piece or the composer to appreciate how vividly his personality shines through this music. Yes, it was a product of its time, a piece written under the tutelage of Walter Piston and other Harvard legends. But we can hear that, at the age of 18, Bernstein had his own voice and his own artistic vision (not to mention prodigious technical skill).
When Mr. Perkel first told me about Bernstein’s “Music for String Quartet,” he withheld his personal opinion of it. He wanted no spoilers. People could make up their own minds about the piece when they heard it performed. His opening remarks were full of fascinating detail about the score’s discovery, and audience members could later be heard expressing nostalgic sentiments as he placed sheet music on stands, much as he did for decades as BSO librarian at Tanglewood and Symphony Hall.
First impressions matter. So when you present the New England premiere of a work by Leonard Bernstein, you owe it to everyone, including the composer, to ensure that the music is performed at the very highest level. The Berkshire Chamber Players’ lineup varies from one performance to another, but it always comprises world-class musicians. For this program, the players were Yevgeny Kutik and Robyn Quinnet on violin; Marka Gustavsson on viola; and cellist Ronald Feldman, along with his brother, Juilliard and NEC collaborative piano guru Jonathan Feldman, on piano (one of the few keyboardists capable of grabbing eyeglasses out of his pocket and putting them on his face in the middle of reading and performing a lickety-split Schumann score.) All of the players were in top form on Saturday. Of course, musicians are expected to give their all on such auspicious occasions. But it was evident that these players had already put their all into rehearsal. The crowd at the First Congregational Church roared its approval not only of the performance but also of Mr. Perkel’s efforts to make it all come to pass.
