Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium)
7 min
Recording
- I. Phaedrus; Pausanias — Lento; Allegro marcatoIsaac Stern, violin; Symphony of the Air; Leonard Bernstein · 19 April 1956, New York; Columbia ML 5144 issued 19567:01
Isaac Stern, who was the soloist at the first performance in 1954, plays the first movement of Bernstein’s violin Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium), with Bernstein conducting. The movement opens with a slow fugato for the soloist, followed by a fast sonata-allegro on the same material.
Listening notes
- Opening fugato, solo violin
The Serenade opens with a fugato begun by the solo violin. Bernstein’s guide links it to Phaedrus’s “lyrical oration in praise of Eros”. The intervals and contours of the violin’s opening return in the later movements.
- Bernstein on Plato’s Symposium
Bernstein said the Serenade resulted from “a rereading of Plato’s charming dialogue”, The Symposium, and had “no literal program”. He described the music as “a series of related statements in praise of love”.
- Pausanias, Allegro marcato
The Allegro marcato follows the speech of Pausanias on the duality of lover and beloved. It is a classical sonata-allegro on the material of the opening fugato. In the second theme the violin plays disjunct grace-note figures and dissonant intervals.
- Recording, New York, 1956
Isaac Stern, soloist at the first performance in Venice on 12 September 1954, recorded the Serenade with Bernstein in New York on 19 April 1956. Columbia issued it that year as a mono LP.