Leonard Bernstein
Paul R Laird (author) Reaktion Books 978-1-78023-910-1 200pp £11.99
With this volume, the composer of West Side Story joins Karl
Marx, Coco Chanel, and over 70 other cultural figures compactly celebrated in the British paperback series ‘Critical Lives’. He richly deserves his place, even though
Paul R Laird’s early statement that Bernstein had ‘one of the most extraordinary musical careers of the last few centuries’ may seem overly rosy, depending on your sympathy for some of his output’s grandiose jumble, or how you interpret ‘few’.
Still, Laird’s enthusiasm for his subject, kindled in a student encounter touchingly recalled in the final pages, must have eased the difficult task of compressing a complex man and a hectic career as composer, conductor, and public figure into 175 pages of text. It’s a pity that this Kansas professor’s positive thoughts didn’t give his prose more personality: with their flat accumulation of facts, too many paragraphs recall the claustrophobic dullness of a programme booklet’s biographical note. Some analyses of specific works tend that way too; the exceptions are the valuably sharp comments on the songs of Bernstein’s musicals. The lack of an index limits practical use. Illustrations include eight boring photos of buildings. Geoff Brown ★★★