Civil Rites

Marin Alsop celebrates composer Leonard Bernstein's eclectic, audacious approach to liturgical music in 'Mass'

Make us grow in love

- from Eucharistic Prayer II, Roman Catholic Mass

When Leonard Bernstein undertook to create a work for the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, it was inevitable that he would think big. Very big.

The result was Mass, subtitled A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers. There has never been, and probably never will be, anything quite like it.

Since its premiere Sept. 8, 1971, it has generated mixed reactions, from ecstatic to dismissive.

Among those in the strongly positive camp is Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director Marin Alsop, perhaps the most ardent champion Mass has had since Bernstein himself. Over the past dozen years, she has conducted it in collaborations with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra and others.

"I don't think there's one weak moment in it," Alsop says of the two-hour work. "It's just brilliant."

She is about to lead the BSO, Morgan State University Choir and Marching Band, Peabody Children's Chorus, soloist Jubilant Sykes and others - more than 250 performers - in a semi-staged production at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall that will be recorded for a CD to be released on the Naxos label.

Mass then moves to New York's Carnegie Hall and United Palace Theater (with local student performers), as part of "Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds," a citywide festival marking what would have been the composer's 90th birthday. A final performance will be at the Kennedy Center.

"When I first heard snippets of it, I thought, what's that? The sound was kind of like 'Kumbaya,' very '60s folk-song in a way," Alsop says. "Then I got really curious about it when I started to get to know Bernstein."

Alsop was one of Bernstein's favorite students; she received a conducting fellowship to work with him at the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts in the late 1980s, a couple of years before he died.

"I had a feeling there was something a bit raw about the subject of Mass for him," Alsop says. "I wanted to know more about the piece and its history, and why it was a sore spot. But whenever I brought it up, he would say, 'I don't want to talk about it.' Then, of course, I got really into it, and I read some of the critics."