Added: 4 years ago
From: GeneralDAS
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  • look at the trumpet players gnarly beard at :17:D amazing how he conducts. i'm trying to imagine what he's communicating to the musicians O.O

    even while sight reading this down for wind ensemble people didn't get the syncopation and accenting right at 3:24. drove me nuts D: super psyched to play this in a couple months. ever since i've heard this two years ago it's been on my bucket list to play:P don't know if i'll ever get the chance again since i'm not a performance major. Business ftw ^^

  • At 2:32, Bernstein is like "Hell yeah, I wrote this groove."

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  • <3 leonard. his dancing is superb at 0:28 so cute lol

  • I REALLY would love a version of this on youtube that is both high-quality AND synched...

  • One of my favorite pieces of music evererer

  • I feel as if the clouds of heaven open up at 4:20.

  • @bbbiggs That figure makes me want to pick up french horn again so I can play it.

  • i found a video of the ny phil performing this ditrected by their concertmaster. it seems to have disappeared from youtube. does anyone have a link to this?

  • what year was this performed? late 80's?

  • @Lalumia4 1989

  • I completely ♥ this conductor. He's like, "I'm just gonna groove, ya'll know what to do."

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  • i really like the violing mass entry at 1:35

  • Moses on Trumpet!!

  • epic beard man is epic

  • Concertmaster intensity at 2:30

    Jellin'.

  • Thank you SO much!

  • A very nice piece.

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  • What music!  Maybe this seems selfish but I've always wished Bernstein would have gotten conductor wrist or tennis elbow... anything so he would have spent more time composing rather than waving the stupid stick. Even the best directors are forgotten eventually... but can write this?

  • @mccheese0 Unfair generality. He is -still- beloved for his conducting. Note the 60-CD Symphonic set just released (which I bought). His role in bringing Mahler to the fore would have been enough, but he did so so much more.  None of this is to take away from his compositions, most of which I adore.

    Mahler has been dead for 100 years, and his conducting and interpretation of numerous works are still discussed and studied.

  • I like how Moses is playing the trumpet

  • @laqerhill Haha, nice -laughs-

  • Yeah! Bearded Trumpet FTW! :D

  • "Song" is a problem. I have to agree with GeneralDAS about the overall dumbing-down of the language of music appreciation, as it were. In part we can thank Apple and its ubiquitous iPad, iPhone, i-everything, for creating a culture of "songs" that can be downloaded for 99 cents or whatever. So now we an entire Wagner opera a song, or a Mahler symphony.

    Welcome to iWorld. Let's iSing.

  • wow this piece brings back great memories of when i was a highschool freshman and my school marching band marched to this great piece. It was hard playing it but we managed to perfect it on tempo 400

  • wow this piece brings back great memories of when i was a highschool freshman and my school marching band marched to this great piece. It was hard playing it but we managed to perfect it on tempo 400

  • bernstein, what a hero. we just played an arrangement of this amazing piece for clarinet choir, wow the clarinet 1 part is hard... especially at like 168 ha!

  • great video and thanks for the sync up, although i too have to take some umbrage at getting so worked up about the word "song". in this day an age to the average music fan (which we have nearly all been) the word "song" is interchangeable with piece, overture, lied, madrigal, tune - whatever you want to call it. it's like the word tannoy, which is also misused. being ignorant would be to dislike the music, but being uninformed should not be penalised.

  • @corda1983 How is it uniformed? My note at the beginning obviously shows something is wrong with using it. Thus, people that post comments otherwise are just being smart-asses, or being completely defiant. The latter is perfectly fine with me, just as long as it's on someones else's comment page..

  • If you're arguing semantics or etymology to be more specific, you're opening up a very large can of worms, as many of the words we use in regular speech have different meanings that have diverged quite significantly from their original meanings.

    While I and some others try to avoid incorrect usages of words, there's no way to get it all 100% correct without speaking in an archaic dialect.

  • yes, THANK YOU for synching this up. the other version drove me crazy watching it - everyone just a split second off!!!

  • i played this in my high school wind ensemble my junior year of high school 4 years ago. we were 2 points away from a perfect score at our competition with this piece. i loved playing this so much!

  • AWESOME piece of music ! :)

  • Yeah people should start referring to things like this as pieces. Really.

  • I'm really not sure it's cool to delete comments referring to this as a song... Some people probably don't have that much musical experience, and will refer to everything as a song... Other than that, it's good to have a synchronized version.

  • Damn, this song gives me a hard on.

    Seriously though, thanks for syncing the music.

    Also seriously though, it doesn't help to be so high and mighty and against people's tendency to refer to all music as a bunch of 'songs'. If someone enjoys this piece enough to comment on it, why silence their praise? You know what they meant, even if the terms are wrong.

    Not a flame, just some advice.

  • @GeneralDAS

    Point taken. Thanks for this excellent music!

  • @pianodan10 Sorry I'm with General on this, the term "song" is just plain-out wrong, it's an overture, or this piece, but please not song, no one is singing!! It really massively grates with me, when people call it song. The stange thing it seems to be an American thing, I've not heard my kids at school in the UK refer to pieces of music other than real songs, as songs.

  • There is something with Bernstein... Looks like he's jamming away with classical music. he's just so absorbed in it

  • Leonard Bernstein is such a cute conductor. I would hate to have to rely on him from the downbeat, but his dancing is so adorable. ^_^

  • This is an amazing piece to play, I was so excited when my high school band decided to play this. This was my first experience with a Bernstein piece, and its obvious he was an amazing musician and the fact he dances on the podium makes it 10 times better. Woo Lenny!

  • A song, a piece, an overture, a box social, who cares!

  • Cymbals at the 2nd time repeat at :53. The last note...kinda late lol.

  • The flute and piccolo solos sound really fun, and the 1st chair first violin solo is sweeeeet.

  • i  am playing the flute part....im1st chair..and although my solo sounds good i still get nervous :(

  • its sooo hard to play it that fast (my mouth hurts T-T )

  • this oveture is AMAZING! we're playing a revised version in band right now, but this one is so much cooler. it flows so much better, the clarinet section is definately more confident than ours, and its so much better with strings.

    Bernstein is awesome! he makes me laugh with how enthusiastic he is. i wish he would come and conduct our band for a day... but he's dead now, isn't he? idk

  • bernstein is halarious....but he lookes like a fun conductor and with his dancing.....im pretty sure i can almost hear someof the analogies he uses for the sections of the song. a very beautiful peice

  • such a great piece.... words cannot describe how much I love this piece, lol

  • I believe a professor of mine got it right on the nose when he referred to the conducting of Bernstein as "musical masturbation"

  • My band played this freshman year. This is my all-time favorite piece; it alternates between beautiful, powerful, and frantic yet blends them into something more. If only my band was as good this year.

  • lol the amazon ad on this video says "buy song"

  • had a ball playing the piccolo part

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  • Ah, wonderful. Always one of my favorites. I'm just sad that the orchestra I'm in now can't do it, as we could never find enough brass. (I'm going to pretend that this is the only problem, and not that it's just too hard overall. :-P )

    And Bernstein is adorable! The way he starts bouncing at 2:33 makes me giggle out loud.

  • That last impact he showed conveys exactly how it sounds / should feel to the players and audience. Best maneuver ever :)

  • The opening of this piece makes me think of a busy metropolis, with people crossing the street, taxi cabs, street vendors, and police patrolling the streets.

  • 3:44 to end= perfection

  • I would cut my foot of with a rusty butterknife if it only meant I could have him as a conductor for a day.

  • @rockclimber21 My old teacher at college played for Bernstein in the LSO several times. He described him as "A horrible, horrible c**t" An audience favourite, but not the orchestra's favourite!

  • I seem to remember the Dick Cavett show having used this as it's theme music for part of its incarnation. I could easily be wrong, but it's one of my favorites.

    I also attribute my deep lifelong love for music of all types to Leonard Bernstein's Music for Young People shows on TV. He did have his quirks, as do all of us, but he was brilliant and worked to educate musicians and to promote the careers of young talented people.

  • This is just one of the greatest pieces of music of all time.

    So powerful. Brilliant.

    Still think that Bernstein was a better composer than conducter, but uh, what do I know, eh?

  • oh my goodness my high school played this piece my freshman year for marching season and boy it was beautiful! our theme was "A Night At The Opera" and we played this piece, Nessun Dorma, and Dance of the Jesters. It was magnificent! Bernstein is just great

  • were playing this in band, its the funnest piece ever! I love 1:22 its soooo pretty, and I have the main melody ^^

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  • Oh, I love it so. Thanks for posting the synched version-- I've always found the other one too painful to watch. This was a delight to see how much enjoyment he was getting from it!

  • haha, watching Bernstein conduct cracks me up. It doesn't seem like he's keeping time, but he is creating the music coming at him. I love it.

    Excellent recording of my favorite composer, and hearing it how he intended. Long live the spirit of Lenny in his music. It still captures my imagination!

  • I played oboe in the pit for Candide in high school. This piece stirs up some fond memories.

  • The first time I heard this music was a jazzed-up version on the old Irv Kupcinet show in New York via PBS back in the 70's. I had no idea then what a revered piece of music it was, I just knew that I loved it! Thanks for uploading it in its complete and fully synched glory! BTW, why so touchy about the distinction?

  • 1:22 is beautifulll

    3:25 is my fav. part lol...

  • Lol... we're playing this in YOCJ in the Symphonic Orchestra. Sooo phun :D

    And beautiful in some parts...

  • presumably this isn't Candide as in Volatire?

  • Actually it is. It's Bernstein's opera based on the Voltaire work.

  • Bernstein's Candide is a comic operetta based on Voltaire's novel.

    The show was an initial flop, though it has gained a cult-like status, and the Overture is a very popular choice for orchestras around the world.

  • 2:30 is my favorite part

  • My high school band is playing this for our spring concert in a few weeks. I love it; it's so fun to play!

  • ah, thank you for posting a syncronized version of this video, I was trying to follow along with the music to the original video and was getting a little frustrated cuz I can't mentally line them up!

  • overtueeeee

  • This Overture is AMAZING! I got a chance to conduct this in my conducting class at college. It was so much fun especially with the espressivo part with the violas and cellos at 1:22. It's such an amazing melody and it is just so beautiful. I really loved conducting that part.

  • This is my final for my conducting class in college right now!

  • Ahh!!! You are so lucky! Are you doing the whole thing?

  • yep! We got the condensed score for it. Idk if there's a full score but yea. lol. I absolutely love it. It's a difficult piece to conduct. Loads of cues and normally that wouldn't be hard, but cueing with different hands a lot. It gets hard for me. lol.

  • My school's band was slowly sightreading this peice for a little while. It's gonna be quite a challenge for me to get it up to speed... I look forward to it. :D

  • Our school band is doing it too, we are a just little under tempo but weve been working on it for a while

  • what school do you go to?

  • We've been working on parts of it quite under tempo... It's a level higher peice than we usually do... But I have confidence in us... :)

  • my school is doing it for the school concert..its getting really good

  • what school do you go to?

  • I would totally get confused and lost with his conducting.

    lol

  • These are professional musicians. They don't really need him to give them a steady tempo - they can maintain it on their own. Instead, he serves to give the musicians the "feel" they should portray.

  • I love this piece so much, and the way Bernstein is conducting in this video is the best!!!!! I just love how he's dancing at that one point. Also the bassoonist is pretty funny at the beginning when he plays that fast part, he reminds me of a frog. :p Haha but overall I love this piece and especially this video of it.

  • this is my favorite piece of all time.

    i was crying then laughing then jumping out of my seat!

  • I love this song. :P jk

    Seriously, though this is one of my favorite pieces by one of my favorite composers.

  • I've thought this piece was incredible from the first time I ever heard it.

  • I love this piece. I just love it.

  • What a genius composer... :o The form of this Overture is amazing. All the Operette is amazing... Glitter And Be Gay :o AMAZING

  • my high school band is playin this i'm playing 1st and 2nd trumpet (2nd)

  • anyone know the name of the cool trumpet player with the crazy hair at 3:45 ?

  • that is the one and only Johannes Brahms himself... that dude looks just like him...

    o-O

  • well im a saxophone player and i heard it

    it sounded like a lip slur

    like he accidentally played the next lowest pitch for that fingering

  • So I'm a senior in highs school right, ok well I have to teach these little 7th graders how to play and count and slur and pretty much the basics. Well, let them listen to this and they were literally dumbstruck. I let them hear it before class started, they played much better after hearing what a true orchestra sounds like. It was an amazing moment.

  • We're playing this piece in my band at school. We're the Texas State Honor Band and we'll be performing it at the TMEA conference in San Antonio in a couple weeks. I'm so excited. We go faster than this, though.

  • that's riduculous! this is pretty fast already.

  • this is slow compared to his NYP recording

  • ok... the horn player did not screw up... its supposed to sound like that. the piece makes fun of itself, and the use of weird harmonics does so. ta da! im amazing haha

  • oh much better. I have to practice this for IMEA state auditions and the first video of it freaked me out because I thought it was all crazy and off. Now i feel a little better. Thanks for the video!

  • 2:31

    He's dancing lol

  • Bleh I'm so bored.... I have to play this for the concert on violin.

  • this *syncing* is still off.

  • well im a trumpet player and i heard it

    it sounded like a french horn

    like he accidentally picked the wrong instrument or something

  • Hehe.... song. *Dodges lightning*

  • well im a bassoon player and i heard it

    it sounded like a lip slur

    like he accidentally played the next lowest pitch for that fingering

  • Why are you people saying the exact same thing??

  • well im a cymbals player and i heard it

    it sounded like a lip slur

    like he accidentally played the next lowest pitch for that fingering.

  • I am sorry to say that your band director told you what it is in the business an "old wives tale". As with all transcriptions for band of living composers, permission is gotten from the composer himself through the publisher. In this case LB's own publisher G Schirmer had authorized Beeler's transcription. It just so happened that Boosey and Hawkes, another LB publisher had reissued Candide and Bernstein authorized Grundman to transcribe Candide again at the same time he authorized Slava.

  • wow!! i also love the way bernstein moves with it!! its soo funny! i played this piece playing 2nd trombone and the part is ace...in the middle (lyrical bit!) we'd all breakk out into song! (we weren't playing at the time!) I love this piece and i listen to it so much 9i really don't have much of a life!

  • Only a horn player would notice something like that. lol

  • But I didn't hear it... Weird.

  • well im a flute player and i heard it

    it sounded like a lip slur

    like he accidentally played the next lowest pitch for that fingering

  • well im a horn player and i heard it

    it sounded like a lip slur

    like he accidentally played the next lowest pitch for that fingering.

  • at 3:00, the horn player screws up.

  • Ah ok I heard it. its very minor, very hard to notice.

  • i love this video and i love bernstein.

    and i also love how people argue over videos on the internet.. because we all know that if each one of these people saw the other in person, they would most likely not have the balls to say anything. it's quite comical.

  • I love watching Bernstein conduct. However, this is one of those rare pieces where I actually prefer the concert band arrangement by Clare Grundman. Does anybody know if Bernstein ever conducted that version?

  • Actually, my band director just gave a lecture on Bernstein and Candide, and he says that the Grundman version is actually a further modification of Walter Beeler's arrangement. Apparently, Beeler and Bernstein both attended school together at one point, and Bernstein strongly disliked him.  When he heard about Beeler's arrangement, he got the publisher to stop producing it. He then had Clare, whom he was friends with, arrange it. It turns out both versions are quite similar after all.

  • OMG! i love how bernstein dances on the podium!! so hilarious!

  • "Download This Song: iTunes; amazon mp3"

    We need to do something about this!!!! Seriously, did they not read your disclaimer? It is clearly spelled out on Bernstein's podium. My band director made it CRYSTAL clear that this is an overture, not a song, lied, or any form of vocal performance. We played pretty fast, but not as fast as them LOL. How does that old drum major move so fast?

  • Well, ignoring the obvious flaming of that message, all I'll say is that deleting comments because they refer to this overture as a song is hardly fussing, seeing as I put up a notice at the beginning of the video I posted. If someone such as yourself feels so inclined to call this a song, by all means go to the other (horrendously out-of-sync) video and post "NICE SONG" on it 'till your heart's content. Oh, and it even has the London Orchestra credited! So you'll be really happy!

  • Thank you for preserving Bernstein's legacy and dignity. I know that he would be turning over in his grave if he knew that people were ignorantly referring to his overture as a measly "song."

    This is important.

    People need to learn proper nomenclature if they ever expect to be taken seriously on YouTube comment boards! I agree with your personal stance on zero-song tolerance. Bravo! We need to clean up this website. You and me.

  • Calling and Overture a "song" is just as bad if not worse then calling a Drum Corps a "band".. BIG MISTAKE!

  • doesn't a song imply there are lyrics?

  • Yeah, that's what people don't understand.

  • yes, but in actuality there ARE songs in this overture. Glitter and Be Gay is one of them Usually the pieces in overtures have the main songs in them to highlight the show.

  • This is true, but the the piece as a whole is not a "song".

  • yep. a song is a vocal piece. and there's no vocals in it.

  • What's up with the trumpet player's beard? Looks like Brahms :)

  • If people like this as a "song" is it all that bad?Y would the uploader delete comments from these people??:S

  • In a modern world of too much vocal music, and not enough instrumental music, people tend to refer to any piece of music a "song", which is vulgar and incorrect. A song is a VOCAL related musical piece. This particular selection is an overture with no lyrical parts whatsoever.

  • You're just being too annal.

  • Maybe someone should be more "annal" about your proof-reading...

  • LOLLL. so many of you guys are playing this!

    dude NY allstate is playing this piece as well as the firebird suite. SWEET. maybe i'll see some of you guys there =].

  • Heh... Holy fuck, I will never be able to play it that fast... But it's a dazzling piece.

  • haha all like all state orchestras are playing this

    i'm also going to be playing this for coda this year

  • WOO NH allstate orchestra is playing this song this year too.

  • Oh God. it goes so quickly!

    I'm going to die playing this for CODA.

  • cool were playin this in my school band.

  • cool my band did this last year

  • I came on here to listen to this because I got the intense urge to hear "Overture to Candide"... such a great work.

  • did this guy right this or something?

  • Oh,Damn,Our Orcheastra Needs to preform this for a summer compatition,i dont think we are going to preforme Lol O_O

  • i freaking love him and his dance moves!

  • First of all, the annotation at the beginning is awesome.

    Secondly, thank you for the synchronization effort. The Bernstein groove at 0:29 is lost without it. ;)

  • Ah... Bernstein. A director I once had attended a master class Bernstein gave on conducting. Essentially all that Bernstein said was thus: It's fine as long as your hand moves up.

    Gotta <3 Bernstein.

  • Still a bit out of sync, but great video!

  • This is from an era where the Overture to a Broadway show was as important as the opening number.

    Always a favourite. I loved watching Lenny conduct in such a {{{{small}}} way, so unlike his extrovert demeanor when conducting, say, Mahler. He clearly loved Candide, as do I.

    Thanks for posting this wonderful bit of Bernstein history.

  • I like how he stops conducting to watch and enjoy the band, then comes back at integral moments to lead.

  • he is the best at 30 seconds

  • the conducter is pretty funny to watch

  • No matter how many times i hear this it still sounds frech and modern, thnk u so much 4 posting, Alan

  • It's too funny. The director is funny.

  • not really, it's just the feeling of the piece. The motion of the ocean. The will of the musical spirit. And when it moves you, you have to act.

  • great music

  • my bad, this overture

  • this song is soooooooooo much fun to play! im playing it rite now in my band class. and i must say that the trumpet player's beard is very....long. and the bassoon player is rather amusing to watch XD

  • This is one of my favorite overtures ever.

  • I don't think I have ever seen a conductor enjoy the music quite as much as Leonard Bernstein. I love how he basically dances the whole way through. Not only was he an amazing composer but he was also a fantastic conductor.

  • I love the bassoon guy at 1:10!

  • lmao at 2:33!