For. A. Minute bernstein was a desolate musical genius worshiped and loved us both a person and an artist exerted an irresistible charm on everyone he met his life was as exonerating as his music. Good stuff travels its a current of flight or. You are lost in the music and if youre not that it cant be a good one. And i mean lost of music in a sense. Which you feel youre imposing it as you go along and its always a surprise theres so many surprises anyway but you yourself have to be surprised epa surprised. The. The. The. Was. The. Month that the man who exhibited the passion from every pore around her for that reason could inspire others guys to call for those students like myself we never dreamed we never realize that a great personality like that could take the time and we have the generosity. To simply give so much to the next generation when i would go to his apartment for a lesson for example i had absolutely no idea even from the repertoire what it was we would study today lets go to the museum. Today the school watch a play would you like to see a film today. Today lets study the fifth symphony of tackle ski come lets play together at the piano my father turned on the television on sunday afternoon and i saw this guy they had been talking about Leonard Bernstein on television talking about music which was so exciting for me and so my father took me to a young peoples concert when i was nine years old. Started talking to me about how excited he was about the music and he was animated in jumping around and having a great time and i turned to my father nicette thats what i want to do i want to be conductor. Ok now what do you think that musics all about you tell me i think im up to feel of first and then these big personalities never die. You can feel when you see a big deal of first thing that hes still there at the Lincoln Center conducting or as if in vienna tangle you feel that hes still around. Leonard bernstein a universal musician with a vast palace of talent composer of west side story a conductor of boundless passion a brilliant pianist and an influential t. V. Thats the most wide ranging musician of the twentieth century. The son of jewish immigrants from russia bernstein must go near boston on august the twenty fifth one thousand nine hundred. S. Father was against him becoming a musician so the young lady had to pay for his own piano lessons. The sixteen year old played in jazz bands and like to party far into the night. He had lots of friends and intellectual interests and even then he fascinated anyone who met him. He had charisma by the bucket load i dont i cant think of another artist with such personality such charisma she knew just dry aat energy he has that puts anybody at half his age to shame that kind of enthusiasm and love for what he did and it was always real there was not a funny bone in it you know people hated the fact that he jumped around it was it was all real thats what made it different it was not for show. Then you see if he was fond of kissing other people as many would just wipe it away last but others leave and its bernstein sweat after all is nice too i like to hug him conners actually. My father he kissed everybody that was the joke. When you were. You would kiss president s and their first ladies and then he was yeah he was a kissing bandit well so thats why its funny because if you didnt remind him maybe he would have kissed pope paul on the lips you dont know. He didnt have this sense of distance personal space that most people have he was like a big puppy we would laugh sometimes because wed be all my god here he comes like out hard you know. Where you stay here and oh so i think i just. Have to think hes really let you see inside him he opened up his heart so that you could almost see his meeting. He said once to new drawer of the american composer he wanted to be loved by everyone in the world norm said thats not possible he said thats my truck. After finishing the concert his sister would be waiting in the wings with the silver glass with scotch in it and or cigarette. And so he would have a sip of scotch. Some cigarette and then back out for about how come back same. How and as many times they need to and then you go back and have some more in the dressing room with this batch of. The fun really started at night but you never knew when he would arrive after the concert or how many people hed bring with him and then you had to improvise and paul you see i didnt get was more than that i went on till three or four in the morning since he was in such high spirits after the concert and so wide awake that he just needed time to come down to earth again so i. Dont want to come he was a terrible insomnia. And this was both a blessing and a curse it was a curse because he was always exhausted but the blessing of course is that he got twice as much done in his life as the normal person because he had more waking hours his average day was almost twice as long as everyone elses average day. It wasnt that he was so quick so mercurial in his headlong his thoughts ago but no matter whether he had drunk one two or eight glasses of whiskey there was always a cascade of ideas and stories and moments of fun listing a moment for him to sun with him it was incredibly interesting to talk to him about theology or about the bible all sections of which he knew by heart in hebrew and of people is that back then he would travel with an entire library of three suitcases full of books because hed be reading ten or twenty books all the same time it is not about so much he could go to entire sections of curtis fost in german for example when he spoke english fluently hebrew german french or spanish he spoke russian. And then im sure he could get around oh italian you know so. I always used to say lenny youre a migrant rabbi where every was if there were a few people present he would lecture them you could always learn something from him he was just good m. R. I. Sound funding. Lenny fancied himself a renaissance man and he thought he he was everything except maybe a page it was the only thing i think he never claimed to be. Linked to this until it got to so and to not people think is conducting is so emotional and filled with feeling and his way of behaving and the whole way in which he lived but his academic background his selfdiscipline was incredible you sometimes get the feeling with lenny that he had so many gifts that you all came you know without too much hard work but actually he was never afraid of hard and he certainly knew these pieces very very well indeed. I knew you just didnt walk up in that box called the podium unless you really knew what you could. And theres no two ways about your cut and sort of you know when you get in youve got fake theres no way. You have to know and but no i didnt just go with the sick bad as do thats when it says nothing. What the composer meant as a Leonard Bernstein is a fascinating figure also in the history of American Music he was the first conductor and musician to be completely trained in america. In one thousand nine hundred eighty after studying music at Harvard Bernstein got involved with tanglewood festival which was to play a major role in his artistic future. The director of this festival for Young Musicians. And he and conducted dimitri metropolis was remain lifelong influences. I learned for the first time what a conductor does how he has to study and this man was really incredible he knew everything and he was incredibly passionate he had an enormous influence on me he is in my blood to this day said what should i do and then the spear and he said you must be a conductor. Conductor. Of course its perfectly obvious how do you know i know i said but i could write about it study with some of. Those early encounters with simple betrothal as in so many other ways. Because metropolis was j. I was an outsider he was greek he was never really set to america he understood mahler before most other conductors in america he made the first record of your mothers first symphony in minneapolis not a forty one he was phenomenally energetic and with many of these letters isnt on the podium the trouble is would jump up and down he was a very tall man and then he was short and metropolis was really the first gymnastic can to try to was an intellectual who read in five languages and loves nothing more than to sit through the night discussing the nature of the universe need just go to. Passivity very different separate you know vastly intellectual not technically the most accomplished musician but he is an instinctual and an emotional musician who is able to tap into the teapots of a sea baby a symphony for example in the way the few others ever done and so lenny was able to connect with koussevitzky musicianship a very personal level he said he said thats of course a step two in my class i didnt have to play the piano do it just on the basis of letters and under no personal but because we loved each other on sight and so it was to be about father instantly we loved each other and. Till a day he died in my arms. The one part is fun fun fun fun fun lots of boys lots of girls and the other part is actual creative formation through the connectivity that he gives in tanglewood was the fountain of youth for our dad he loves going back there every summer because his own youth there was so tremendous and fruitful and full of excitement and wonderful memories and music making. Him. The third influential figure was to be the legendary american composer Aaron Copeland who recognized bernsteins Exceptional Talent and encouraged him to devote himself entirely to composition. Where i would come with a new piece or soften the new piece or the idea for a new piece in sale throw it away its warmed over screen. And i just start all over again getting boring say thats good i think he wanted to see himself as a kind of. Gal successor to Something Like encroachment partly because they were so close partly because he absolutely loved what copelands music dows and i think he also found incredibly moving the fact that copelands music sounds like you know what an american symphony should sound like somehow all night these are so jealous of his desire to write music. I always found it terrible when he threatened to limit himself to the composition of the leg and please know im a complete. This cozy king martin second for his great characteristic and hallmark is that when you hear the music you know its bernstein is the its not easy to be so unmistakable as a composer but bernstein always achieved this in. My speech what i like best is the turkey trot in divertimento. We composed it like a turkey moving through the open country and also falling down and rolling around cool and the way you wrote it its simply fantastic to say. I love the moment especially in American Music when popular and serious music the blend and bernstein was the epitome of this because he not only could bridge that gap and break down that barrier but he could also do it in a way that was extraordinarily skilful and yet very accessible. But all the way through there is a sort of almost certainty about whether hes really any good as a composer. The times when he composed best and bluestone it was when he was working with us the symphonies dates from the time that he was writing musicals in teams he left those teams to come to me green im stephen song time to remember all things. In all of the office he loved working almost as a football it also must be within. The Lawrence Jerome robbins steven sometime that it can start. This legendary to even created one of broadways greatest successes with the west side story. Thank the. Many had a couple of tunes that he that he had in mind some from old shows that were cut out of both shows him but he also written hed written a front strain of maria. And hed written the front strain of cool which of course at the same melodic shake the green. Knight is just not a good name mother. And son. Will never be the same. So i went into our first apartment and went over what they were going to do and talked about style so we just started writing. Poems. Come. West side story. Kicked into a sort of new york type christ of the time the virtue novels about this new generation the new film about this new generation that was only this musical semi oprah which was looking at what was really happening on the streets and was recreating it in shakespearean tubs it is the most new york work in any art form and it liberated the best of Leonard Bernstein meanwhile my father was writing candied. At the same time and he ended up reading both shows at the same time which is so beyond my comprehension and i cant even and some songs went back and forth between shows. The scores for candied particularly west side story are still ahead of their time great. Work wasnt together and. Thats a plus. Its really. I never heard of it all together by laurie. They obviously wanted desperately to break it as a composer more than anything he wanted to make it as a composer but the other thing that he says in his letters which he didnt generally say elsewhere to very Close Friends hed say the trouble is i just love conducting so much how can i say no to conducting you know modest ninth if its going to give me a couple of weeks to compose when i know im not going to get anything finished any. By now bernsteins career had taken off as a conductor he was in great demand whether new york vienna or turkey or every one of his charisma and multiple talents. He found himself increasingly drawn to europe and spied by the composers much some from sudden. The bavarian radio and the Vienna Philharmonic soon became two of his favorites. The serious least ill have a lot less you have. That out of it every day without faith but out but i. Thought i. Used to be a bit. On the necessary pieces. As opposed to its all. That i love that i love it. And then ive done stein and stuff mama Kindred Spirits like mama bernstein delighted in extremes his shop incident is matched by an overwhelming emotionality. With the sciatic. Mahler being jewish being to conduct to being a composer not always being accepted i mean Different Things in life. I think the comparison is good with Leonard Bernstein when another person and i would discuss mahler i felt as if i was speaking to a composer thats what the fascinating part as i was thinking why do i get so involved. So there. Rick after i finish a movement of the most information im out of breath and drenched. And shaking. My stomach is a bit my throat somewhere why not just stand there and beat time and let all this happen by itself. And i realize i kind. To morsi kamalas is in vain mahlers music was received with mixed feelings and vanity feelings as far as outright rejection of his. I think he believed that he had to do something for mana because mahler was underexposed as a result of the political conditions decades earlier saying for the people they were the focus of the great beautiful about the great orchestra of a city in which knowledge of music had been banned i mean he started giving the end of her. I look. In much. The same heighth in all form i can still see im standing there at a rehearsal of mahlers ninth that in the final movement he suddenly knelt on the ground and tears poured down his face i also think it was so moved by the music of us and it left a powerful impression on everyone else from the start and. That if we had played mahlers third fourth or seventh for the first time with bernstein then all later conductors were judged by bernstein standards i would say thats how it has to be said he definitely changed the worlds view of mahler i think he was an absolutely key influence in bringing mahler absolutely to the center of musical life. Gets. Better bogut and us mahler were here and heard this performance. I think you would say ok let me. Right here a saw in this music is like you two of you getting a strange side that simply sounds childish not judy istic not hebrew not israeli but jewish from the most universal. This old quasar rabbinical instinct that i have for teaching and explaining and verbalizing. Suddenly find a real paradise in the whole electronic world of television every bar in this movement is based in one way or another directly on these four notes three g. s and any flat three g. And any flat. People have been wondering for years just what it is that in dolls this musical figure with such potency he loved conveying information you know he liked showing off the information too but he left conveying it you know and so he made i think a wonderful teacher i saw all all the on of the shows i anything that he broadcast i saw long before i met him i wrote these ninety minute scripts and had to memorize them and heads of go at five oclock they have to do whatever it was on sunday and what i was doing was what everybody was watching on television from coast to coast that second as the conductor views this school is i asked to follow all these twelve instruments simultaneously across the page i used to be up nights writing rewriting having meetings and try to memorize it and my wife five of them would sit there spelling me with friends in reading and memorizing the script and they would fall asleep and i. Grab the script on their hands and do it myself just memorize them read them it beethoven did not wish the entire orchestra to be playing so he dismissed five of these twelve instruments beethoven clearly wanted the strongest most masculine utterance he could get. He did so much to add value to Television Programming because what was going on in those early days of television was that they had three networks three National Networks but they didnt have enough content they were desperate for content in one hundred fifty eight ben stein became the head of the new York Philharmonic orchestra he made the young peoples concerts a condition for taking the job this eries inspired a new generation of young music lovers. And there is mr byrd. For class the gift of having Leonard Bernstein come to us from us and said ever since i can remember sousa television it was a great inspiration thats the one two three method its like a three stage rocket or like the count out in a race on your mark get set go or in target practice ready aim fire or the same thing is true in mozarts hofmeyr symphony it goes ready. Made. Fire and. I do remember sitting in front of the t. V. And being told to watch this this is important and it was important in the fiftys in america culture was much more important than it is today and there was this idea that that the middle class was pulling itself up and being mo