Laureate's Farewell

For his three scheduled concerts with the New York Philharmonic last week, Leonard Bernstein chose a single work:

Mahler's exalted but nostalgic Symphony No. 3 for contralto, massed choruses and orchestra. It was an appropriate choice: Bernstein has done more than any man alive to popularize Mahler. The concerts were the last that he will give as the orchestra's musical director. At the end of the 105-minute performances, Bernstein received standing ovations, and he was near tears as he embraced the soloist and first-desk musicians. The orchestra, at an emotion-laden private party, gave him a silver-and-gold mezuzah, sculpted by Artist Resia Schor; the directors of the Philharmonic presented him with a 19-ft.-long speedboat, so that Lenny can practice his skills as a water-skier on Long Island Sound near his Connecticut country home.

In fact, the farewell was not really the most final of finales. Bernstein will continue to direct televised children's concerts with the orchestra and serve as a guest conductor, and the Philharmonic has honored him for life with the quaint title of Laureate Conductor. Even so, his ten-year tenure as music director was a particularly personal and successful relationship. The first American-born conductor to head a front-rank U.S. orchestra, he was chosen to succeed the late Dimitri Mitropoulos in 1958; since then, subscriptions rose from 9,886 to 25,570, and concerts at Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall, at least when Lenny conducted, were seldom less than a sellout. Although the orchestra could play dispiritedly for antipatico guest conductors, at its best it was the equal of any in the world. Proof was the power, sweep and controlled passion of last week's stunning performances of the Mahler Third. Balletic Leaps. Purists complained of Bernstein's balletic leaps and flamboyant podium style, but he used his showmanship to the Philharmonic's advantage. Thanks to his records and televised concerts, he made the orchestra almost as much of a national as a New York institution. Although Bernstein's reputation as a champion of new music is a trifle inflated, he gave the U.S. and world premiere of 42 works, including 26 pieces by American composers (one of them his own). George Szell of the Cleveland Orchestra has agreed to take on the additional duty of music adviser to the Philharmonic. Next season he will share its podium with five younger guest conductors -- all of them potential candidates to succeed Bernstein. They are America's Lorin Maazel, Hungary's Istvan Kertesz, Rafael Fruehbeck de Burgos of the National Orchestra of Spain, as well as two men who once served as Bernstein's assistants: Japan's Seiji Ozawa and Claudio Abbado of Milan's La Scala.

Time for Composing. As for Bernstein, he flies off this week to conduct Beethoven's Missa Solemnis for the 100th anniversary of the Vienna State Opera, "and that will be the end of my conducting until 1970." The new time found will be for composing. He will confer with Italian Director Franco Zeffirelli about a joint project -- "almost a sort of filmed opera" -- and he has a commission to do a musical theater work for the opening of Washington's Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in the fall of 1970.

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