The Leonard Bernstein Letters (98 page)

Dear Lennie,

I asked a friend to send me a tape of your
Enigma Variations
in London recently.

I have just listened to it and it is the most moving performance of the work I have ever heard.

I just wanted you to know how much I admire your interpretation and how I felt it revered Elgar's every indication.

Love,

Yehudi

Dearest Helen,

I want you to have this
in writing
on your birthday, since flowers can wilt and the telephone-voice is ephemeral. This is only to say, once again and for always, this I cannot imagine my life without you, not one year of it out of the
soon-to-be-three decades.
¹⁸
My admiration, gratitude and deep
respect
are matched only by the intensity of my prayers for your health and happiness.

Love,

Lenny

Dear SS,

Saw [
Sunday in the Park with
]
George
Tues eve (but not you). It (and you) is brilliant, deeply conceived, canny, magisterial, and by far the most
personal
statement I've heard from you. Bravo.

Love,

L

Dear Man,

Somehow, in the midst of clicking cameras and microphone-bearing reporters, mystified onlookers and frantic volunteers, conducting students, my buzzing musician colleagues […] the wires, lights, echoes and occasional blurtings of babies, I discovered that Leonard Bernstein was not just an image on a screen, a part of the title on a page of sheet music, a dusty recording on my shelf. What had been a name to me became a heart. His heart was in my heart, and I warmed myself by the fire of his affection. I wanted to hold him in silence. But so many needed him, his touch, his smile, that I became very small.

At home, after the concert, I found myself alone, surprised and shaken. From all those hands and faces, would he remember mine?

If only I were a cat needing a fish, how simple life would be! But here I am, traveling the human road, and needing Leonard Bernstein.

Kris Braly, viola,

Baltimore Symphony

Dear Lenny–Maestro,

In the last weeks I worked on the
Wunderhorn-Lieder
and found out that my voice isn't suitable any more to these songs and I don't want to be my own competition to the wonderful records we made – 18 years ago!

So, I am really very sorry, but wise enough not to sing with you in the coming summer!

I hope I am not making you and Harry [Kraut] too many problems with my cancellation, but
please
understand my point of view.

Love,

Christa

Dearest Lennie,

The last time I had as glorious a time in DC was '57 –
West Side
– you asked me if I'd like to work on the Y[oung] P[eople's] C[oncert]s – and you've been making me happy – musically, personally, too, ever since.

With deepest love and praise and delight.
A Quiet Place
is not uncomplex but boy is it worth it. It's truly wonderful.
²⁰

Love you,

Mary

Dearest Lenny,

It was a wonderful occasion to attend your opera
A Quiet Place
at the Kennedy Center. The work is very moving, absorbing and complex. All is held together by the wrenching beauty and intensity of the score, which as I told you at the party gave me the good “old goose pimples” of emotional involvement. I especially loved the trio at the end of Act I, and all the third act. That does not mean I did not appreciate the second act, which is full of its special delights.

While melding the two operas may make for a better balanced evening, I still feel the two operas have very separate emotional values. The performances were superb and could not have been better. It was also beautifully directed and simply, but very effectively designed.

I can think of no modern opera of such intensity or in a sense generosity. By letting it all “hang out”, you have bared your soul, which few modern composers are prepared to do. Thank you for your beautiful music.

I do love you.

Oliver

My dear old chum,

Bobby passed on to me your interest in trying to reshape and make something out of
1600
[
Pennsylvania Avenue
]. I gather that although there is no schedule you would like to get it done some time before the
tri
-centennial.

To get to the point:
of course
a fresh pair of eyes is needed. Even though I've had an eye implant and don't wear glasses any more (can you believe it?) I don't think this brand new one will be sufficient, and I would welcome a writer with ideas on how to reorganise and rewrite.

As far as the lyrics are concerned, I suddenly seem to have taken on a new lease of life and am scribbling away like fury. I have a musical in rehearsal here in July which John Dexter is directing,
²¹
and am two-thirds through the score of another that Allan Carr plans to put into rehearsal sometime in the autumn. Besides that I am just completing a huge tome for Collins on a history of the musical theatre since Offenbach. So if the right time for you should be impossible for me, and time adjustments cannot be arranged, as much as I would dislike it I would understand if you had to turn to someone else for any additional lyrics. But I truly hope that will be only the last resort. I would love to have another crack at it.

It is very interesting how
1600
started because Robby
²²
remembers its inception one way and I have a clear memory of it in another. Originally I wanted to do five episodes which were critical in the history of the White House. I remember that I thought the entire production would look like a rehearsal, on the theory that democracy is still rehearsing. Robby, on the other hand, is convinced that the original intention was to write a sort of “Upstairs Downstairs”
history of the White House – without the upstairs. In other words, it would be told strictly through the eyes of a multi-generational servant family. What I think we got was a mixture of both with moments of the black experience thrown in, all of which added up to a horse with three heads. I still vote for the “upstairs” story – perhaps now even more than ever because the upstairs material is fresher and we have been surfeited with the history of the blacks in America. Another reason is because I don't – and didn't – do that sort of thing very well. But, I am open to any and all approaches.

In any event, I have some two thousand books and crates of pre-play material that are finally about to be shipped over to me and I will be able to examine all those early versions.

I am, at long last, not happily married but ecstatically so to a smashing lady
²³
– we've been together for five years and married for four, a track record for me. We bought a house too quickly that was and is too small, but we have finally got around to looking for a place large enough to accommodate all that I left in storage. I adore living in London and I've had the most wonderful five years of my life here. So whenever we meet – which I hope will be soon, somewhere – prepare yourself for a bubbling version of your old Virgo friend.

I hear the new
West Side Story
album is terrific. We have been in Spain for a few days on hol and this is our first day back, but I've already ordered a copy.

I think of you often. And always with love.

Aye,

Alan

Dear Lenny,

Thanks for the album – very impressive – but I wish you'd have asked me before restoring that first (and not-my-favorite) Jets quatrain.
²⁴

Love,

Steve

Dear Steve,

It's particularly hard to apologize to today's Pulitzer Winner for a bit of thoughtlessness (or perhaps it's easier: you might understandably be in a euphoric and forgiving mood). In any case, I
was
thoughtless, so carried away by the fun of presaging the Gym-swing-music that I neglected to consult you for approval. I am sorry, but also (forgive me) singing and leaping about in celebration of your new glory. And does your show deserve it!
²⁵

Congrats

Blessings

Love

Lenny

Dearest Helen,

A quick note from Ben-Gurion Airport, en route to Munich & Japan and …

The last two nights have made concert history here (Mahler #9).
²⁶
I don't think I've ever heard it played with quite so much passion and tenderness. The orchestra is transformed, the newspapers ecstatic. I'm enclosing the one
non
-ecstatic review, at least of
Halil
; the rest is the usual rave. I personally, on the other hand, have fallen in love all over again with
Halil
, and Ransom W[ilson] is playing it like a god.

I think of you so often, and send you love from so many friends – especially the Lishanskys, who gave me a great fish-festival dinner-party after our Haifa concert.

Keep well, and cool. I'm managing to do so, although I frankly don't understand how, given this formidable schedule of rehearsals, travel, concerts, receptions, parties, time-changes … But I've survived my birthday, and feel younger than ever.

A big hug & kiss,

Lenny

Lenny,

What a
good
concert!
²⁷
Especially the Copland & the last movement of it. Thank you! It was good to see you working again, and so finely. Sorry I couldn't get back stage to say hello & thanks in person.

Have a good holiday season – & all love.

Jerry

All love, as always,

Lenny

My dear Lenny!

I haven't seen you for ages. I send you with a kind help of Sarah Caldwell my script
The End of
[
the
]
Musketeers
. In my immodest opinion it could be very easily transformed into kind of “sparkling tragedy”, full of joy and bitterness, strange mixture of French champagne with a womit [vomit]. Probably, only composer who could create music for such kind of theme are you, because you are all of my musketeers and it could be your own confession, like it was mine. Of course it needs a lot of work if you'll like it in collaboration with me and one American poet. I am waiting for your answer. I was hopelessly trying to find you in USA.

My love and respect,

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

My dearest poet-friend Yevgeny,

I have just tried to telephone you to Peredelkino; I
think
I got through to someone who understood. In case not, the message was: I finished yesterday reading the
Musketeers
script. I loved it; I love you.

Further, I am moved and excited and want to work with you (and, of course, an English or American lyricist, although you are already a great lyricist).

Further
: I believe this will be a great musical work –
not
an opera in an opera house, but directly for
film
. It is a natural film, “cast of thousands” as they used to say in the great old days of Eisenstein and Cecil B. de Mille – a wildly funny epic that tears out your heart even while you laugh. I don't know exactly how this film should be made, or where; perhaps it is all
animated
, like Disney cartoons, or played by robots (they make fantastic ones now in California) or eventually by
real
actors and singers, or all together. Maybe someone like Fellini should direct it; it should be a
major international project
.

What is the next step? I don't know now, but I will soon. I will be in Wien, Hotel Bristol, this next week, then back in New York on 8th October. Then I become
composer
for five months! In this period we can decide many things. Where and when can we meet? Can you call me in Vienna, or if too late, in New York?

Beginning of
big
song: music already shouting in my head!:

Live before you die!

Don't die until your death!

(in Eb)

Call me, write me, come to me, or all three … we have a lot of work to do, and play …

Much love,

Lenny