Bernstein

Barry J. Edwards was a librarian with the Metro Toronto Library.

Charismatic personality, manifold talents, and such classic American scores as West Side Story and Candide have together made conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein one of music’s most universally recognized superstars. In this, the fourth in his impressive “Art of the Conductor” series, Toronto critic and broadcaster Paul Robinson writes that “it is a fearful burden [Bernstein] bears in being the best-known musician of his time and the one most likely to be believed. When he speaks about music, millions listen, and take what he says to be the truth.”

This musical Messiah has always been some-thing of a paradox. In his tireless mission to make classical music more accessible to the masses, Bernstein has, in the eyes of some critics, sacrificed his artistic integrity on the altar of Mammon. Nor have such later works as the Mass on Dybbuk met with unqualified success. Yet none can dispute the success of his popularization programme in which he has brought serious music to America through television broadcasts, young people’s concerts, books, and even pre-concert pep talks. In the space of just over 100 pages, Paul Robinson creates a candid and insightful picture of Bernstein’s multi-faceted personality.

Like the other books in the series, this one merely sketches Bernstein’s life and career, although the salient points both before and after his appointment to the New York Philharmonic are all considered in retrospect. There emerges the portrait of an engaged man of the world with trenchant opinions on Zionism, human dignity, faith, civil rights, music theatre, and popular music, who leads the hectic life of conductor, composer, pianist, writer, lecturer, and whatever else he can find time for.

In the chapters devoted to Bernstein’s vast output of recordings, Robinson’s critical acumen is put to the test and proves unfailingly judicious on the whole. His comments on Bernstein’s important cycles of Beethoven and Mahler symphonies should render it easier for record-collectors to make their selection. A comprehensive discography by Bruce Surtees (pp. 112-48) of the conductor’s many standard and non-standard recordings is not wholly consistent with Robinson’s text. On page 74 we read that Bernstein “has recorded all the later [Haydn] symphonies from 82 to 104” although the discography does not include nos. 89-92. Similarly, the statement that he has recorded “most of the [Haydn] masses” is patently misleading, for again the discography shows that of a total of 14 acknowledged Haydn masses, Bernstein has recorded only four.

While obviously Bernstein is no substitute for a full, fleshed-out study of the great conductor, Robinson has still managed to say all that is essential and much that is both provocative and probing as well. As the author notes himself, “the purpose of the book will be served if the reader is stimulated to reflect on various aspects of Bernstein’s creative activity, and perhaps even moved to ponder the very nature and significance of music.” Recommended.