What Lenny means to me
Some talked about his legacy. Others recalled what “Lenny” was like as a person. Pianist Lara Downes and conductor Marin Alsop cited him as a career touchstone.
Leonard Bernstein would have turned 100 years old Saturday, and in honor of the centennial, The Times reached out to the music world to share stories. After Bernstein died in 1990, a newspaper cartoon showed a flag planted on planet Earth. It simply read: “Leonard Bernstein Lived Here.” If these edited remembrances are any indication, the man and musician remains as beloved as ever. You can read more of them at latimes.com/arts.
Joshua Bell Violinist
Just as I cannot contemplate what my life would be like if I had never heard Bach or Beethoven, I also cannot imagine a world without Leonard Bernstein.
He was perhaps the most complete musician of our time. As a conductor, he electrified orchestras and audiences with his huge persona and physical embodiment of the score. As an educator, he had an uncanny ability to analyze and verbally articulate what music was about with clarity and elegance.
And as a composer, he portrayed the richness of America and its melting pot, while capturing the essence of the human condition in both its glories and imperfections.
Although I never had the chance to meet Lenny — one of my great regrets — I am grateful for the precious gifts he gave us, and I continue to be inspired by his spirit, which is very much alive and well 100 years after his birth.
André Watts Pianist
I played the Liszt E-flat Piano Concerto at a Young People’s Concert in the fall of 1962 and got to substitute for Glenn Gould in January 1963 with the same work. I had heard criticism about Bernstein’s flamboyant, exuberant, uninhibited style, which was often viewed as showboating.
When I arrived in New York to sub for Gould, Bernstein told me we would be recording the Liszt concerto that Sunday. I had no idea what this entailed. When we came near the end of the allotted time, Bernstein said he wanted to record the last four or five minutes of the concerto again. He wanted to try for something different from the orchestra. But we had time for only one more take, so he told me not to stop playing “under any circumstances.”
Less than a minute in, we all suddenly heard someone singing along at the top of his lungs. It was Bernstein! He immediately stopped and said an expletive, laughing along with everyone else.
Jamie Bernstein Daughter
I couldn’t have been more than 12 when I was chatting with my father in his studio up the driveway of our Connecticut house, and he said, “You know what’s marvelous? You know how to treasure your experience.”
Treasure my experience? I had no idea what he was talking about.
Writing “Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein” turned out to be a way of pulling my father closer to myself, at the very moment when he is being most intensely shared with the world.
It’s a bit of a conundrum, to have drawn him closer while simultaneously sharing that experience with others. But it did feel good to go back in my mind — and my brother’s and sister’s minds as well — and gather all the memories.
Maybe that’s what my father meant all those years ago; I have indeed treasured my experience after all.
Shai Wosner Pianist
It was the Vienna Philharmonic’s historic visit to Israel. Leonard Bernstein was conducting Mahler’s 6th Symphony. I was a 12-year-old Mahler nut, sitting with the score in a state of total rapture. This was like the second coming of Gustav, if not Jesus.
Naturally, I snuck backstage, to get the Mahler Messiah’s autograph. I got there so fast he hadn’t even come off stage yet.
I was waiting anxiously when I suddenly heard a “shalom” in a deep, raspy voice from around the corner. I told Bernstein that the Mahler was amazing (which it was) and proudly handed my little pocket score for him to sign — cigarette in his mouth the whole time, of course.
Amid the smoke, I tried to come up with something smart to say while he was signing, but all I could think of was, “You know, you really should quit smoking ...”
I think his reply was, “Ah, well ...”
Leon Botstein Conductor, president of Bard College
Watching a clip of Leonard Bernstein explaining to a network TV audience in 1960 what it means to interpret a musical text (a Bach concerto for keyboard) in a program with Gould, one realizes how utterly astonishing he was.
He broke through the snobbery and resentment that separate concert music, Broadway, jazz and popular music. But the aspect we miss most is his political courage. Bernstein resisted autocracy, discrimination, censorship, injustice and inequality. His patriotism, his love of this country was to its laws, its pluralism, its openness, and to racial justice, the embrace of immigrants and their access to the American dream. Bernstein fought against violence, fear and war. He wanted America to be a beacon of democracy and social justice. The best way for musicians to remember Bernstein is to follow in his path and to fight for the democratic vision of America Bernstein cherished.