Leonard Bernstein would have turned ninety years old on Monday. Carnegie Hall and the New York Philharmonic have decided to mark the occasion by putting on a four-month festival called Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds that kicks off on September 24 with an all-Bernstein gala concert by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, followed by a whole lot of this and that.
I am, to put it mildly, skeptical about the motives behind such a celebration, which strike me as rather more commercial than artistic (why not wait until the centenary year?). But I’m not skeptical at all about Bernstein himself, who was by any imaginable standard a great artist–even though much of his work was a good deal less than great. So it seemed appropriate for me to take note of his ninetieth birthday by writing a “Sightings” column, and the results will appear in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal.
I invite you to take a peek. I’ve written a fair amount about Bernstein over the years, but I think this column is a pretty good summing-up of what made and makes him enduringly important.
UPDATE: Read the whole thing here.
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
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