THE LETTERED BERNSTEIN

“By the time Leonard Bernstein died in 1990, he was unquestionably America’s best-known classical musician. Yet his achievements were viewed with persistent skepticism by critics and scholars. They acknowledged his wide-ranging talents–he was equally gifted as a conductor, a pianist, and a composer of music for both the concert hall and the musical-comedy stage–but his underlying seriousness was always in question…”