Bernstein conducts Bartok 1950: Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

Leonard Bernstein conducts the NY Philharmonic on February 19th, 1950: Béla Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz. 106, BB 114.

This exciting performance was recorded off the air by Reynolds Marchant in 1950. This is relatively early in Bernstein’s history with the NY Philharmonic, well before he took over the orchestra in 1958 (from Mitropoulos).

Unfortunately I have (so far) only found the first three movements but I thought this was unique enough to post partially complete. I hope I can find the fourth movement soon on another reel. When archiving something that someone put together decades ago it’s difficult to predict what you’ll find!

The program from the performance:
https://archives.nyphil.org/index.php...

There were multiple performances of the piece that week in 1950, but only the February 19th performance was broadcast - see the Philharmonic’s archive of radio shows here:

https://archives.nyphil.org/index.php...


Technical info:
Scotch 111-A
7” Cine Reel
7 1/2 IPS
Used Waves plugins to remove pops and a few crackles

00:00 - Introduction by Jim Fassett
00:19 - Andante tranquillo
09:07 - Allegro
16:12 - Adagio