There will be many chances to re-evaluate the music of Leonard Bernstein this year, as American orchestras and ensembles celebrate the 90th anniversary of his birth. And there is increasing consensus that this prodigiously gifted musician may have been underrated as a composer during his lifetime.
On Monday night, at the Frederick P. Rose Theater, the Collegiate Chorale and its dynamic music director, Robert Bass, contributed to the Bernstein year by presenting the New York premiere of “A White House Cantata,” a concert adaptation of “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” an ambitious musical that Bernstein wrote with the lyricist Alan Jay Lerner. At its 1976 premiere, the show was a colossal failure, closing after seven performances and demoralizing its creators.
Those hoping that the Collegiate Chorale’s presentation, directed by the actor Roger Rees, would uncover an overlooked treasure may have been disappointed. The original musical was an ill-conceived venture with a pretentious book offering a historic panorama of the White House occupants, from Washington to Theodore Roosevelt. Woven through this narrative was a pontificating story about slavery.
“A White House Cantata” is a pared-down, 90-minute version of the musical, and the score has some lively and effective music, including deft evocations of Dixieland, along with metrically fractured waltzes.
But from the opening prelude, with its quizzical rumblings in the orchestra, rich with wandering chromatic harmonies and hints of hymn tunes, the music sounds as if it is straining to be serious. When a humming chorus joins it, atop an ominous pedal tone in the orchestra, the effect is hokey. The prologue segues into “Ten Square Miles by the Potomac River,” an intentionally crude march during which Washington and delegates from the 13 states have a feisty contrapuntal debate over where to locate the nation’s capital.
Though “Take Care of This House,” a wistful piece sung by Abigail Adams, may be a touch saccharine, it has won a place in the song-recital repertory. Bernstein certainly had a feeling for dance, as proved by a calypso-driven ensemble during the marriage of Lud and Seena, stand-ins for three generations of black servants in the White House.
Still, as a theater composer Bernstein may have been at his best when he had nothing to prove and could use his great skills to get the job done, as in his charming, witty score for “Wonderful Town,” which he composed quickly under pressure. In “A White House Cantata” you sense his struggle to lift the genre of the musical to some higher musical plane, and the effort comes through.
The baritone Dwayne Croft brought a robust voice and dramatic flair to portrayals of all the presidents. The soprano Emily Pulley, singing the first ladies, stopped the show with her tour-de-force “Duet for One,” in which she portrays both the incoming first lady, Lucy Hayes, on the Inauguration Day for Rutherford B. Hayes, all aflutter with excitement, and the outgoing one, Julia Grant, full of sniping complaints about her successor. Also admirable were the coloratura soprano Anita Johnson as Seena, the sweet lyric tenor Robert Mack as Lud and the appealing Kalif Omari Jones, just 10, as Little Lud.
The fine musicians from the Orchestra of St. Luke’s were not quite on top of this complex and fussy score. Mr. Bass may have pushed his choristers too hard in an attempt to sell the piece. Still, sing it they did, with hardy sound and high spirits.