These performances, the video drawn from two London Barbican performances in December 1989, and the CDs made a few days later in Abbey Road’s Studio One (which were Bernstein’s last studio sessions), represent Bernstein’s final thoughts on his great opera. Importantly, Bernstein also gives an amusing and thoughtful five minute introduction to the work immediately before the video-taped performance and a short afterword
Candide has taken its rightful place at the top of Bernstein's creative canon, with as many hit numbers as the better known West Side Story. Moreover, DG’s version of it is seen as the definitive statement of one of his greatest and most accessible compositions, created just eleven months before his untimely passing.
This is the first time the two performances, with identical cast, have been brought together in one format.