Soon after I joined the London Symphony Chorus it was my privilege to perform Leonard Bernstein’s Candide under the leadership of the great man himself. This experience was captured on camera by Deutsche Grammophon and I still have the DVD.  You can find extracts on YouTube (my, we were younger then!)

Approaching a performance some 20-plus years later a certain nostalgia sets in amongst members of the chorus and the London Symphony Orchestra as we share memories and recollections.  They are not all flattering to Bernstein who was not always an easy man – one soprano reminds me of how critical he was of our then pianist in rehearsal.  I recall Bernstein smoking on the concert platform during rehearsal and remember how staff had to approach him to ask him to stop.  We all remember how the cast was besieged by flu.  At the same time, many memories are treasured.  This was our last performance with Bernstein who died soon after.  The cast was superb.  Even some of our own chorus members had solos to sing.

These memories don’t augur well for our present-day conductor, Kristjan Jarvi though he may not know it, predisposing us to make comparisons and to resist his approach.  This is coupled with a certain pre-concert anxiety which compounds the effect:  we look for clearer directions than we are given (especially as we are asked to make movements, grappling with our scores, watching the conductor and dying… dancing… waving).  And even as we get clear about those movements we wish for more rehearsal time than we have.

Come the night, though, everything comes together and we – I at least! – enjoy ourselves hugely.  Our present day cast is also superb.  Rory Kinnear as narrator holds the story and engages the audience so that we are laughing from the very beginning and don’t stop until we have finished the piece.  Andrew Staples in the role of  Candide has the kind of guileless quality the role demands.  Kiera Duffey, as Cunegonde, puts on a superb performance of the song Glitter and Be Gay, scaling the song’s great heights with ease as well as conveying its comedy.  Kim Cresswell throws all vanity to the wind to give a hilarious performance in the role of the old lady.

Can we forgive Jarvi for not being Bernstein?  In the end it is the old man who prevails – not necessarily as a conductor but because he composed this wonderful piece with the same quality of tunes-manship that we enjoy so much in West Side Story and with orchestration which adds to the beauty of every note.  So, it will take something more from Mr Jarvi to usurp him.

Oh!  And PS:  we award “man of the match” to David Jackson, percussionist, for his athletic sprints between various instruments in the piece’s overture.