Hal Leonard Symphony No. 2, 'The Age of Anxiety' - Bernstein - Full Score

Full score to Bernstein's Second Symphony for Solo Piano and Orchestra.

Composer: Leonard Bernstein
Publisher: Boosey & Hawkes
Full Score

1991 Corrected Edition.

Like Serenade, Bernstein's Symphony No. 2 "The Age of Anxiety", is a concertante work, and closely follows the action of a philosophically oriented literary source - in this case, W. H. Auden's poem/dialogue of the same title. In Auden's poem, four lonely people meet in a bar and try, through alcohol, to establish some kind of connection: ostensibly with each other, but ultimately with God. Says Bernstein, "The piano provides an almost autobiographical protagonist, set against an orchestral mirror in which he sees himself, analytical, in the modern ambience." Bernstein's intense personal identification with this poem, and with its characters dilemmas, gives this work its powerful emotional pull.