A Tribute to Lenny
This Week: Leonard Bernstein at 100 with Nigel Simeone, Jamie Bernstein, and Augusta Read Thomas. Listen today at 2pm or anytime on our website.
Lenny the man, or Lenny the composer: this was the question we kept coming back to in preparation for our 100th birthday tribute. Bernstein is a fascinating specimen of midcentury cultural history—as multifarious in life as in his musical styles, as personally flawed as he was gifted. But should the personal matter in a celebration of the music? In the end, we decided to sidestep the issue by homing in on one single, magical work: West Side Story.
Nigel Simeone walked us through the music in West Side Story, explaining how Bernstein drew from different musical styles for his masterpiece.
In her interview, excerpted briefly in our radio hour, Jamie Bernstein helped to deepen our sense of Lenny the man (and the father). She told us about the scandal surrounding Tom Wolfe’s famous “Radical Chic,” a piece that mocked Bernstein and his wife for hosting a hip party for the Black Panthers—in the Nation, she writes about its impact on her family.
We also took a deep dive into the YouTube archive of Lenny’s Young People’s Concerts, aired on CBS. They’re fantastic—worth a listen for children and adults alike.
What We’re Reading:
McKinsey as geopolitical player. Law school and democracy. A new Warhol show. John Lanchester on Agatha Christie. Pamela Anderson (!) on the yellow vests. Isabel Wilkerson on Michelle Obama. Jill Lepore is suing to unseal documents from two grand juries in Boston 50 years ago that investigated the leak of the Pentagon Papers.
That’s all for this week! Keep an eye open in your mailbox for our end-of-the-year thank you note. Have a wonderful week. Thank you for listening and for your support and encouragement!
❤ the os team
