Leonard Bernstein

In the editorial (July 30) about the FBI keeping a file on Leonard Bernstein, you are many years late, and thousands of people short. As a leading newspaper, you should have led a crusade against the government spying on any people, instead of whimpering about a musician being included among the "communist spies" three decades after his file was begun. There is nothing slanderous about being a communist. They have always been on the side of worker and peasant. There are no communist spies (there may be spies from other countries, but there are no spies among communists in the U.S. other than those planted by the FBI (CIA, etc.)

Susan Lacy, creator and executive producer of PBS' "American Masters" series, gives viewers a rare look at pop culture impresario David Geffen in her documentary "Inventing David Geffen," which premieres Tuesday. As the creator and executive producer of "American Masters," why did you choose to make the David Geffen doc? Because you don't make all of them. This is probably the eighth film I've directed. I do have final cut on all our films. After about 10 years of doing the series, I'd spent so much time in edit rooms, I said, finally just do one on your own. And I'm very interested in music.

Leonard Bernstein is retiring from conducting on the advice of his doctor, it was announced today. Dr. Kevin M. Cahill advised Bernstein, 72, that conducting and playing the piano might be too strenuous for Bernstein's present condition. Cahill said Bernstein suffers from progressive emphysema, complicated by a lung tumor and a series of lung infections. During the summer, Bernstein canceled several engagements, including conducting opening night of the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, S.C.

It's appropriate that when Tricia Tunstall first entered the world of Gustavo Dudamel, her guide was the daughter of the musician Dudamel regards as one of his spiritual mentors: Leonard Bernstein. In winter 2008, Jamie Bernstein, a writer and broadcaster, went to hear Dudamel conduct the Israel Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in a program that included her father's Concerto for Orchestra ("Jubilee Games"). She brought along her friend Tunstall, a New York musician, music educator and author of the just published book "Changing Lives: Gustavo Dudamel, El Sistema, and the Transformative Power of Music.

One wonders where Gustav Mahler would be today, both for audiences and performers, had it not been for the intercession on the composer's behalf in the 1960s of Leonard Bernstein and his New York Philharmonic. Bernstein didn't introduce Mahler to the world or even to the New York Philharmonic and its audience.

Jennie Resnick Bernstein, 94, mother of the late composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein who contributed lyrics to his final work. Mrs. Bernstein's lyrics were for her son's "Arias and Barcarolles," which won a Grammy in 1991 for best contemporary composition. Her son died in 1990, and her husband, Samuel Bernstein, died in 1969. On Tuesday in Boston of a stroke.

Oscar Levant once wrote of Leonard Bernstein that "he uses music as an accompaniment to his conducting." Although that may be an exaggeration, in some ways two PBS programs tonight contrast how Bernstein uses music with how music uses Simon Rattle. In "Bernstein on Brahms," presented on the ongoing "Great Performances" series tonight (8 p.m. on Channel 24, 9 p.m.

Albert Ihde and Ellen Pasternack's nuptials involved much more than the union of two souls -- there was also the ritual joining together of their record collections, which ran a close second for the founding couple behind Santa Barbara Theatre. And when Pasternack first heard Ihde's original recording of Leonard Bernstein's little-known score for "Peter Pan," which debuted on Broadway in 1950, she was gobsmacked.

In addition to the Leonard Bernstein tribute that is part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic program this weekend, other local orchestras are also planning special remembrances. Sunday at Royce Hall, the American Youth Symphony has added local composer Leon Levitch's Elegy for Strings--a personal choice from conductor Mehli Mehta--to the program to honor Bernstein, who died last Sunday.

It is still too early to know what place Leonard Bernstein will hold in the pantheon of American composers. Now that the vibrant, ever-controversial persona is gone, only his music can properly argue his cause. Friday night at Copley Symphony Hall, Robert Shaw conducted the San Diego Symphony in an all-Bernstein program that made an eloquent case for the composer's intellectual breadth and musical vision.

It's tough being an angel, even in as idyllic a setting as the Green-Wood Cemetery, where the leaves of shade trees rustle in the summer breeze and the grassy hills offer vistas of New York Harbor. Acid rain eats away the delicate tips of wings. Marble hands clasped in prayer lose their fingers and thumbs. Noses drop to the knolls. Some cherubs, targets for thieves and vandals, simply vanish. Sure, the full-time residents of Green-Wood might not notice. Leonard Bernstein (1918-90)

Fuzjko Hemming gave the first of two piano recitals at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica on Friday night. Her appearance was heavily promoted on Japanese television. Ticket prices were high -- $60 to $100 -- but both the Friday and Sunday concerts sold out. The 74-year-old pianist has sold more than 2 million CDs in Japan over the last decade, but the Fuzjko phenomenon hasn't yet crossed the Pacific with the general public. I'm not so sure that it will. But I could be wrong. Her full name is Ingrid Fuzjko von Georgii-Hemming, and she has a compelling story.

Saturday morning a major story out of Washington had this headline on the front page of the Los Angeles Times: "Bush-era Surveillance Went Beyond Wiretaps." That evening, "West Side Story" was screened in all its widescreen glory at the Aero in Santa Monica as part of American Cinematheque's tribute to director Robert Wise. A critic's exercise is to connect the dots. "West Side Story" opened in New York on Oct. 18, 1961, and went on to win 10 Academy Awards. In September 1962, the new home for the New York Philharmonic had its gala opening ceremonies.

After a two-day bash at Carnegie Hall for Elliott Carter, who turned 100 on Thursday, the New York Philharmonic mounted a small-scale chamber music tribute to the composer Saturday afternoon that included the premiere of four new songs, titled "Poems of Louis Zukofsky." These are very new songs -- one was dated Saturday morning. That evening in Carnegie's underground Zankel Hall, Leonard Bernstein's last work, "Arias and Barcarolles," was given a rare performance. He wrote it in 1989, the year before he died, and the concert served as the culmination of "Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds," a two-month festival commemorating Bernstein's 90th birthday.

Albert Ihde and Ellen Pasternack's nuptials involved much more than the union of two souls -- there was also the ritual joining together of their record collections, which ran a close second for the founding couple behind Santa Barbara Theatre. And when Pasternack first heard Ihde's original recording of Leonard Bernstein's little-known score for "Peter Pan," which debuted on Broadway in 1950, she was gobsmacked.

Monday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, a bass player from the Israel Philharmonic stepped forward to say a few words to the audience about Leonard Bernstein's Concerto for Orchestra. Hearing a new piece for the first time can be difficult, he said about one of Bernstein's significant last works, which had its premiere in Tel Aviv in 1989, the year before the composer died. "But this isn't just any new piece," he noted. "It's about us." The italics are mine, but you get the point. The us -- the orchestra, that is, which was on the last day of its American tour under Gustavo Dudamel -- is "undisciplined," "unpredictable" and "noisy," the player had said.

Recordings by Leonard Bernstein, one of the most documented conductors in history, will undergo expanded release programs following the conductor's death on Sunday, said representatives of the recording companies controlling the late Bernstein's catalogues. Executives of Sony Classical and Deutsche Grammophon, which control the bulk of Bernstein's recorded legacy, and BMG Classics/RCA Red Seal plan to step up timetables to deliver more Bernstein recordings to the marketplace.

He was a walking--sometimes gyrating--paradox. He could be petulant, witty, self-indulgent, generous, bitter, tender, incredibly energetic, deeply depressed. A compulsive artist who wanted to go on creating forever, he also persisted in smoking even when he knew the fatal dangers it posed. A proud Jew, he also loved the music of the notoriously anti-Semitic Richard Wagner and created a philosophically penetrating musical/theater setting of the Roman Catholic Mass.

SAN FRANCISCO -- On Nov. 14, 1943, 25-year-old Leonard Bernstein made his debut conducting the New York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall. A last-minute substitute for Bruno Walter, he landed on the front page of the New York Times. The next year he composed his first musical, "On the Town," and wrote his first ballet, "Fancy Free," all of which made him the talk of the town.

Shakespeare: An article in Friday's Calendar section about offbeat Shakespeare productions identified Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein as the composers of "West Side Story." Bernstein wrote the score; Sondheim penned the lyrics.