On track: Concert works gain notice they deserve

By WILLIAM DART

Leonard Bernstein was a great communicator, as conductor, television presenter and composer. But, while the songs of West Side Story have become almost public domain, his concert works have been neglected, comparatively.

Never fear, a Naxos revival is afoot, spearheaded by Marin Alsop's superb Chichester Psalms. The latest instalment has James Judd and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in Bernstein's 1942 Jeremiah Symphony and his 1989 Jubilee Games.

Judd's Jeremiah blisters with all the chutzpah of its young composer (it was written when Bernstein was just out of Harvard) and the NZSO players relish the jagged give-and-take of its second movement.

In the final Lamentation, mezzo Helen Medlyn follows dauntlessly where names such as Jennie Tourel and Christa Ludwig have gone before, and impresses. You feel her anger in the opening verses, and the bleakness of her despair when Judah is overtaken, and Medlyn is the soul of flexibility when Bernstein's lines challenge.

The eclecticism that occasionally irritates in Jeremiah is, curiously enough, the point of Jubilee Games, a Concerto for Orchestra from Bernstein's last years. At its most extrovert, there is the free-for-all first movement; at its most intimate, a chain of short duets instigated by Bridget Douglas and Edward Allen, the mood of which is recalled in Nathan Gunn's final blessing, all rapturously caught by producer Tim Handley.

Helene Grimaud's new album, Credo, stands up for that most-maligned of Beethoven works, his Choral Fantasia. The French pianist is in ace company (the Swedish Radio Choir and Symphony Orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen) and she makes it clear this is no Ode to Joy with piano on the side.

The Fantasia and the music around it have been chosen by Grimaud to make a deep spiritual impact on the listener. More revelations come in the composer's Tempest Sonata, particularly in its luminous Adagio and the two Beethoven compositions are complemented by contemporary works.

While John Corigliano's Fantasia on an Ostinato hypnotises with clouds of resonance, Arvo Part's Credo steers Bach's Ave Maria Prelude through twists and turns, growing from the fervour of the composer's faith.

* Leonard Bernstein, Symphony no 1 (Naxos, 8.559100); Helene Grimaud, Credo (Deutsche Grammophon 471 769-2)