Leonard Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on August 25, 1918, and died in New York on October 14, 1990. The first performance of Candide took place at the Colonial Theater in Boston, Massachusetts on October 29, 1956. The Overture to Candide is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, E-flat clarinet, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, tenor drum, triangle, xylophone, glockenspiel, harp, and strings. Approximate performance time is five minutes.

It was perhaps as early as 1950 that American author Lillian Hellman suggested to Leonard Bernstein that the two collaborate on a musical adaptation of Voltaire’s Candide (1759). Hellman first conceived of Candide as a play with incidental music. But over time, the project grew into a piece of lyric theater, much more in the style of a musical or operetta.

It wasn’t until 1954 that Hellman and Bernstein began work on Candide. Even then, various other projects and responsibilities intervened, including Bernstein’s film score for On the Waterfront and the Broadway musical, West Side Story. By 1956, Hellman and Bernstein were still in the process of creating Candide. Richard Wilbur, a young American poet, assisted Hellman and Bernstein with Candide’s lyrics.

Bernstein’s Candide is a work of remarkable energy, lyricism, humor, and, at its conclusion, emotional impact. In her comments on Voltaire’s Candide, Lillian Hellman hailed “the roaring-river quality that was the mark of the genius who wrote it.” Her words might well apply with equal force to Leonard Bernstein’s magical score. The brief and rollicking Overture to Candide, featuring melodies from the work, has enjoyed great popularity in the orchestral concert hall as well.

Program notes by Ken Meltzer