Shooting from the hip was Leonard Bernstein's style. If an idea sprang to mind or a strong feeling came over him, the mercurial American composer-conductor would set it free. When he was 70, he threw himself headlong into performances of his Symphony No.2 The Age of Anxiety with Krystian Zimerman. "Will you play this piece with me when I'm 100?", asked Bernstein backstage. The pianist agreed. He must have been tempted to book the date immediately, such was the older man's incredible life force. Yet that force gave out two years later when Bernstein, struggling with multiple lung infections, died from a heart attack. Zimerman remembered Bernstein's invitation and chose to perform The Age of Anxiety to mark its composer's centenary year. He was joined in June 2018 by the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle, the latter giving one of his last concerts as the orchestra's chief conductor.

The results, recorded live by Deutsche Grammophon, are set for release to coincide with Bernstein's 100th-birthday commemorations. Zimerman and Rattle reveled in the work's theatrical nature, spotlighting an essential quality sanctioned by the composer himself. "If the charge of theatricality in a symphonic work is a valid one, I am willing to plead guilty," Bernstein wrote in the program note for the symphony's first performance in 1949. The composer's longer-term view of the piece was affected by the harsh criticism that followed its premiere and by his evolving search for a distinctive American symphonic language. "He told me personally that the first time he played it himself, with [Serge] Koussevitzky, Koussevitzky didn't like parts of it and asked him to rewrite it," notes Zimerman. "That's where we differed. I always liked the piece and believed in it. Bernstein knew that this is exactly the advantage that an interpreter or actor has: the ability to give a piece a life that the composer is sometimes too ashamed, too modest or too uncomfortable to present in the work himself."

Zimerman's passion for The Age of Anxiety intensified across his three performances with the Berliner Philharmoniker. Strong flavors of Stravinsky emerge in his performance of the composition's "Seven Ages" variations to share the stage with the wild jazz-inflected, white-knuckle ride of "The Masque" and great expressive contrasts of "The Epilogue." Their striking combination reinforced the pianist's conviction that Bernstein's Second Symphony is a work of genius. "I realised two years ahead of Lenny's centenary that he was about to be one hundred. So I looked into the music again – and it's great. It's so much fun. And it's so much like him – with all the freshness and flexibility and craziness of his character."

Musicians:
Leonard Bernstein, composer
Simon Rattle, conductor
Krystian Zimerman, pianist
Berliner Philharmoniker