The Leonard Bernstein Letters (50 page)

130
Renée Nell (1910–94) was a Jungian psychoanalyst. In 1938 she escaped from Berlin to Switzerland where she studied with Carl Jung at the University of Zurich, before moving to the United States and setting up her practice in New York City. A pioneer in work with young offenders, she later established The Country Place in Litchfield, CT, describing it as “a residential community for the psychologically disturbed adult who has more insight than he or she can use, who knows how he or she should act but withdraws from action.” Humphrey Burton identifies her as the “Frau” (Burton 1994, p. 108), but the letter from Bernstein to David Oppenheim on 22 October 1943 confirms that the “Frau” was in fact Marketa Morris. Bernstein later became disenchanted with Nell's analysis, writing to his sister Shirley on 26 April 1950: “My feeling is one totally apart from analysis: I want only to cope, and through my own powers, without aid – especially of the indulgent, personal sort that was forthcoming from Miss Nell.”

131
Howard Hoyt was a theatrical agent and manager who had previously worked as Eastern story editor for MGM.

132
The only known use in Bernstein's papers of
Operation Capulet
as an early title for what became
West Side Story
. Jerome Robbins first put the idea of the show to Bernstein on 6 January 1949. Robbins, Bernstein, and Arthur Laurents met for the first time to discuss the project on 10 January, and a month later Bernstein signed this agreement with Howard Hoyt.

133
Hans Heinsheimer (1900–93) was a legendary figure in the world of music publishing. He first worked in the opera department of Universal Edition in Vienna (1923–38), then went to New York to take up a position at Boosey & Hawkes, promoting new works by Copland, Bartók, Stravinsky, and Britten. He was fired by Ralph Hawkes in 1947 for writing his memoirs (
Menagerie in F Sharp
), since Hawkes wanted a worker rather than an author. Heinsheimer was immediately hired by Schirmer, where he worked closely with Bernstein, Samuel Barber, and others.

134
The first performance was on 8 April 1949.

135
Bernstein was working on his Second Symphony,
The Age of Anxiety
.

136
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, with whom Bernstein was conducting a series of concerts. Reiner left as Music Director in 1948.

137
J. Fred Lissfelt, music critic of the Pittsburgh
Sun-Telegraph
.

138
Izler Solomon (1910–87), American conductor. He was Music Director of the Columbus Philharmonic Orchestra (1941–9) and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra (1956–76).

139
Tossy Spivakovsky (1906–98), Russian-born violinist whose performances of modern concertos such as those of Bartók, Menotti, and Sessions were particularly admired.

140
Arthur Laurents (1917–2011), American playwright, screenwriter, and stage director. His Broadway credits included the books for
West Side Story
,
Gypsy
, and
Anyone Can Whistle
, and he directed the original production of
La Cage aux Folles
.

141
This letter is undated, but the evidence points to some time in April 1949, when Bernstein began to have doubts about the viability of the project that would eventually become
West Side Story
. In Bernstein's “Excerpts from a West Side Log” (Bernstein 1957, p. 47), he included an entry on 15 April 1949, while conducting in Columbus, Ohio: “Just received the draft of first four scenes. Much good stuff. But this is no way to work. Me on this long conducting tour, Arthur between New York and Hollywood. Maybe we'd better wait until I can find a continuous hunk of time to devote to the project. Obviously this show can't depend on stars, being about kids; and so it will have to live or die by the success of its collaborations; and this remote-control collaboration isn't right. Maybe they can find the right composer who isn't always skipping off to conduct somewhere. It's not fair to them or to the work.” Bernstein was plainly uneasy about committing himself and was quoted by Craig Zadan as saying: “I remember receiving about a dozen pages and saying to myself that this is never going to work. […] I had a strong feeling of staleness of the East Side situation and I didn't like the too-angry, too-bitchy, too-vulgar tone of it” (Zadan 1974, p. 15).

142
Ellen Adler (b. 1927) is the daughter of fabled acting teacher Stella Adler. Ellen's close friends included Marlon Brando and René Leibowitz as well as Bernstein. In 1957 she married David Oppenheim (they divorced in 1976). Ned Rorem was bewitched by her “dizzying black-tiger beauty” (Ned Rorem,
Knowing When To Stop: A Memoir
, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994, p. 578).

143
Harold Clurman, Ellen Adler's stepfather.

144
161 West 54th Street is an imposing apartment building near the intersection with Seventh Avenue in Manhattan.

145
François Valéry, son of the poet Paul Valéry.

146
Adler – delightfully – likens Nadia Boulanger's austere appearance to the stern faces in paintings such as Grant Wood's
American Gothic
.

147
Marie-Blanche de Polignac (1897–1958) was a soprano, pianist, patron of the arts, and heiress to the Lanvin fashion fortune founded by her mother, Jeanne Lanvin. She was an intimate friend of Francis Poulenc, who dedicated several works to her.

148
Otis Bigelow (1920–2007), actor, dancer, writer, and later theatrical agent, who spent a year in Paris in 1948–9.

149
Burton Bernstein (b. 1932) is the younger brother of Leonard and Shirley. He studied at Dartmouth College and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and from 1957 to 1992 he was a staff writer for
The New Yorker
. He is the author of a biography of James Thurber as well as books about the Bernstein family (
Family Matters: Sam, Jennie, and the Kids
) and about his elder brother (
Leonard Bernstein: American Original
, with Barbara B. Haws).

150
Peter Gradenwitz (1910–2001), German-born Israeli musicologist and music critic, and an astute commentator on Bernstein's music and his use of jazz idioms. The two became friends when Bernstein visited Israel in 1948 to conduct the Israel Philharmonic. Gradenwitz wrote extensively on Bernstein and his music, from contemporary reports of Bernstein's Israeli concerts for
The New York Times
to the book
Leonard Bernstein: unendliche Vielfalt eines Musikers
(Zurich: Atlantis Verlag, 1984), published in an English edition in 1987.

151
Gradenwitz's
The Music of Israel: Its Rise and Growth Through 5000 Years
was published by Norton in 1949 and dedicated “To Leonard Bernstein as a token of friendship and sincere appreciation”.

152
Bernstein worked on his new symphony while in Israel, and the first performance of any part of
The Age of Anxiety
was given there. The “Dirge” was played at a Gala Soirée in aid of the Israel Philharmonic Pension Fund on 28 November 1948 in Tel Aviv. In his notes for this concert, Peter Gradenwitz wrote of “the first performance anywhere of a Dirge for piano and orchestra composed by Leonard Bernstein during the few leisure hours left to him on his crowded Tel-Aviv days and completed in full score just in time for tonight's concert – this is a most expressive song of lament showing the composer's style developed on distinctly novel lines.”

153
The world premiere of
The Age of Anxiety
took place in Boston on 8 April 1949, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky, and Bernstein himself playing the solo piano part.

154
Probably a reference to
Side Street
(released in 1950), a thriller set in New York. Granger's most celebrated film role came the following year when he played Guy Haines in Hitchcock's
Strangers on a Train
.

155
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
was a 1949 MGM musical starring Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Esther Williams.

156
William Schuman (1910–92), American composer. He formed a dance band while still in high school and was soon collaborating with Frank Loesser, a neighbor who was also at the start of his career (Loesser's first publication,
In Love With A Memory of You
, has music by William Schuman. With typical modesty Schuman later said “Frank Loesser has written hits with Hoagy Carmichael, Burton Lane, Jule Styne and other Hollywood grand dukes, but I have the distinction of having written a flop with him.”). Schuman's subsequent career was as one of America's most distinguished symphonists, president of the Juilliard School and Lincoln Center.

157
A story in
The New York Times
on Wednesday, 20 July 1949 reported that Alan Jay Lerner and Fredrick Loewe were “at work on a new musical […] that is set in the United States in the nineteenth century” (the show that became
Paint Your Wagon
). From Bernstein's angry reaction in this letter, it seems Lerner must have suggested a collaboration. A quarter of a century later these two Harvard graduates did work together on
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
.

158
Michael Dreyfuss (1928–60), American actor and director.

159
The pianist Menahem Pressler (b. 1923) fled Nazi Germany to Palestine. He made his American debut with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1947. Olin Downes reviewed their Carnegie Hall performance of the Schumann Concerto in
The New York Times
, describing Pressler as “one of the few of the young pianists who consider his instrument the agent of glamorous song and not merely a contraption of wires and keys. This, indeed, was the playing of a free artist.” Pressler later achieved renown as pianist of the Beaux Arts Trio. Regarding his relationship with Bernstein, Pressler has written: “I always had a fine relation with Mr. Bernstein. Although he invited me to play with him and the City Center Orchestra to make my debut coming from Israel, Mr. Judson, my manager, insisted that I do it with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Ormandy. But I played his pieces and met him many times in different places, even here in Bloomington. Recently I played his Clarinet Sonata with [Richard] Stoltzman” (email from Menahem Pressler, 12 January 2013).

160
Olivier Messiaen (1908–92), French composer. His first major international commission was from Koussevitzky, for the
Turangalîla-Symphonie
.

161
Bernstein conducted the world premiere of Messiaen's
Turangalîla-Symphonie
with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on 2 December 1949.

162
Yvonne Loriod (1924–2010), French pianist. A pupil of Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire, she went on to give the first performances of all his major works featuring the piano. In 1961 she became Messiaen's second wife.

163
Written in French; English translation by the editor.

164
Arturo Toscanini (1867–1957), Italian conductor, and one of the most celebrated performing musicians of the twentieth century. This letter was sent after Bernstein had visited him and asked about the different speeds in Toscanini's broadcast and studio recordings of Berlioz's
Romeo and Juliet
(see Burton 1994, p. 196).

165
Irwin Edman (1896–1954), American philosopher.

166
A reference to the “Imaginary Conversation” subtitled “Why Beethoven?” that was published in Bernstein's
The Joy of Music
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), pp. 21–39, in which “L.B.”, “L.P.” (“Lyric Poet,” described as a “poet's poet from Britain” – Stephen Spender), and “Y.B.” (“Younger Brother”) converse (see B. Bernstein 1982, pp. 179–80).

167
A letter to Shirley Bernstein (“Hi-Lee”), presumably a “North Country Epic” since it had been sent from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where Burton was a student.

168
Messiaen's
Turangalîla-Symphonie
.

169
Regina
is an opera by Marc Blitzstein based on Lillian Hellman's
The Little Foxes
. It opened at the 46th Street Theatre on Broadway on 31 October 1949, the day before Bernstein wrote this letter.

170
Written in French; English translation by the editor.

171
Robert Fryer (1921–2000), theatrical producer whose first Broadway show was
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
. He later had a string of successes including
Wonderful Town
,
Sweet Charity
,
Chicago
, and
Sweeney Todd
.

172
Betty Smith (1896–1972) was the author of the novel
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
. She collaborated with George Abbott on the stage adaptation.

173
According to a note in Helen Coates' hand, Bernstein replied to Abbott by phone on 12 December, turning down the project. The score for
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
(which ran for 257 performances in 1951) was composed by Arthur Schwartz, with lyrics by Dorothy Fields. Robbins was involved informally (uncredited show-doctoring); the musical director was Max Goberman, whose greatest Broadway successes were
On the Town
and
West Side Story
.