Bernstein in Berlin

Leonard Bernstein conducted the combined philharmonic orchestras of New York, Paris, London, Moscow, and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra in a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on Christmas Day, 1989, in East Berlin, just six weeks after the fall of the Berlin wall. He substituted “freiheit” for “freude” in the original Friedrich Schiller poem, transforming the Ode to Joy into the Ode to FREEDOM! Conductor’s artistic license, and oh-so-appropriate. Bernstein conducted the same orchestra in the same performance the night before, on the western side of the wall. HAPPY CHRISTMAS! (COLD) WAR IS OVER!

This was the third CD I ever bought, age 15. It was ceremony. Sacrament. It was peace. It was freedom. It was signed treaty. It was the end of the Cold War as written by Beethoven and brought to life by Bernstein. It was hope for a new world free from constantly walking on a tightrope of disaster. It was the beginning of my being able to sleep through the night for the first time since I could read a newspaper.

How quaint! How naive. How wishful I was at age 15 to think I’d never again have to muddle through another Christmas in a world that can’t keep it’s goddamn shit together. A world where the President of the United States isn’t for sale to the highest Russian bidder while impotently rattling sabers with China and being bent over a barstool by Turkish real-estate interests. And he ain’t even been inaugurated yet.

If THIS is what constitutes liberty, Patrick Henry might very well have chosen death.

FREEDOM, beautiful spark of divinity,
Daughter from Elysium,
We enter, drunk with fire,
Heavenly One, thy sanctuary!
Your magics join again
What custom strictly divided;
All people become brothers,
Where your gentle wing abides.