‘I am experiencing a historical moment, incomparable with others in my long, long life.’ Leonard Bernstein was 71 when he spoke those words, six weeks after elated crowds began tearing down the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989.
For 28 years the wall had split the city in two, preventing those living in communist-controlled East Berlin crossing to West Berlin, where the democratic values of the Federal Republic of Germany held sway. But communism in eastern Europe had begun to crumble, and the convulsive shockwaves were causing the long-impregnable barriers between the two parts of a divided Germany, both ideological and physical, to crumble too.
Ever a master of the dramatic moment, Bernstein instinctively grasped that he, an elder statesman of international music, had a unique contribution to make at this historic juncture. So when asked to conduct two concerts celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall, he jumped at the opportunity.
When were Leonard Bernstein’s Berlin concerts?
The concerts were scheduled for the 23rd and 25th of December 1989, and would be uniquely symbolic in nature. Three choirs would assemble from different parts of Germany, and the orchestra would be international in character, drawing players from New York, Paris, London, Leningrad, and both East and West Germany. Together they would perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, a work whose arduous transition from oppressive darkness into brilliant, joy-filled light seemed perfectly suited to the occasion.
When Bernstein arrived in Berlin, however, he was far from being in prime physical condition. While in London to record his operetta Candide earlier in December, he had caught a virulent strain of flu. Though still weak from its side-effects, he summoned the energy to conduct not one, but two performances of the Ninth Symphony on December 23 – the first a preliminary run-through for an afternoon audience in East Berlin, the other in the West in the evening.
It was a gruelling day for Bernstein, and he was reportedly ‘dazed, shrunken and ashen-faced’ in the immediate aftermath of the evening performance. In typical fashion, though, he quickly bounced back. While in Berlin he mingled with local residents in the streets, lit Hannukah candles at Berlin’s oldest synagogue and borrowed a hammer to chip a piece of the Berlin Wall off for himself.
What work did Bernstein perform in Berlin?
By Christmas morning, a Monday, the stage was set for the East Berlin performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the historic Schauspielhaus, where in 1821 Weber’s opera Der Freischütz had its premiere. Outside, on the Gendarmenmarkt, thousands milled in cold but sunny weather, watching the concert on a big-screen relay.
Millions more saw it by satellite, with viewers in over 20 countries. It was, Bernstein’s biographer Humphrey Burton later recorded, ‘the highest point in Leonard Bernstein’s public life as a citizen of the world.’
The ‘Ode to Joy’ – or ‘Freiheit’ (freedom)
The Berlin concerts were, however, not without controversy. Moved by the symbolism of the occasion, Bernstein had substituted the word ‘Freiheit’ (’freedom’) for ‘Freude’ (‘joy’) in the Schiller poem used for the symphony’s choral finale, the famous ‘Ode to Joy‘.
This created minor ructions among the traditionalist faction. How dare an upstart American tinker with Schiller’s sacred text? How dare he alter Beethoven’s original intentions? For a fleeting moment the sound of cultural feathers being ruffled was the dominant impression.
In the event, the majestic sweep of Bernstein’s performance of the Ninth swept all before it. And his personal response to the mini-furore was characteristically unflappable. ‘If there ever were a historical moment in which one can neglect the theoretical discussions of academics in the name of human freedom, this is it,’ he stated. ‘And I believe that Beethoven would have given us his blessing. Let freedom live!’