cover image Conversations about Bernstein

Conversations about Bernstein

William Burton. Oxford University Press, USA, $25 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-19-507947-0

With at least three other books about the late composer/conductor published in the past year, this would have to offer some startling new material to fill any kind of need, but it doesn't come close. Burton, a musician and journalist who now lives in England, has had the not very original idea of talking to fellow composers, recording engineers, orchestra members, singers, even other journalists who knew Bernstein, and transcribing the results. The picture that emerges is very much the one we have from the biographies: brilliant early promise, a profligate life, agonies about insufficient recognition as a composer and self-defeating behavior in the later years, even as his critical reputation soared. The musicians interviewed all seem to agree that there was a magnetism to a live Bernstein performance that was not reproducible; recording engineer Paul Myers is crisply dispassionate; biographer Joan Peyser insists that her emphasis on Bernstein's sexuality was intended as a compliment rather than a put-down. It's pleasant reading for Bernstein aficionados but essentially superfluous. Photos not seen by PW. (Mar.)