What Becomes a Legend Most?

By Michael Walsh

Had he lasted a little longer in a life that was lived harder and faster than most (mood: appassionato; tempo: allegro con brio), Leonard Bernstein would have turned 75 this week. But the polymath pianist, conductor, composer, television personality, Harvard man, Broadway baby and quintessential New Yorker died in 1990, leaving a hole in the fabric of American musical life that many have found irreparable. In the three years since Bernstein's death, sales of his records have doubled, his compositions have started to win greater respect, and his legend has waxed. It's almost as if the great man had never left. It's almost as if he were . . . Elvis.

And so this week, the late Lenny's 75th is being observed with both a solemnity and a sense of kitsch -- a mixture of concerts and coffee mugs -- that devotees of the King would appreciate. There are performances to his memory in places as disparate as Argentina, the Czech Republic -- Slovakia, India, Britain, Japan and the U.S. -- so many that the Leonard Bernstein Society has issued a calendar of events to keep fans abreast of all the action. In anticipation of the festivities, Sony Classical has been releasing over the past year what it modestly bills as the Royal Edition of Bernstein's recordings -- a 119-disc set drawn from the old Columbia and CBS catalogs. Each CD cover is royally adorned with an original watercolor executed by none other than Britain's Prince Charles.

Less high-mindedly, the Leonard Bernstein Society has presided over a profusion of Lenniana: Lenny note cards, Lenny umbrellas, Lenny tote bags, Lenny T shirts and Lenny sweats, in addition to authorized editions of his records, books and Harvard lectures. (The paraphernalia does have a pedagogical purpose: proceeds go to the Bernstein Education Through the Arts Fund, established in 1990 to encourage arts education in the schools.) On Wednesday, Bernstein's adopted hometown will honor his legacy when it renames a stretch of West 65th Street near Lincoln Center "Leonard Bernstein Place," putting Bernstein in New York City's street-naming pantheon along with W.C. Handy, Malcolm X and Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Even the normally staid Carnegie Hall is getting into the act with an exhibition of Bernstein memorabilia called "Here We Go!! Love, Lenny."

So here we go! But where? What is the purpose of a vaguely necrophiliac fuss over someone so recently departed? Most revivals take a generation or more, but Bernstein Redux has happened in less than the minimum time it will take for pitcher Nolan Ryan to go from retirement (this year) into the Baseball Hall of Fame (1998). Aren't we -- no offense -- rushing it?

According to his daughter Jamie Bernstein Thomas, many of the events were planned before Bernstein's death. "Maybe his sense of exuberance and serious fun was so contagious that he still elicits that reaction even in his absence," she says. "He just seems to generate a celebratory impulse from everybody." But some people find the spectacle suspiciously premature. "Unfortunately, he is being commercially exploited right now," notes another Lenny, conductor Leonard Slatkin. "There is a lot of effort and time and money being put into keeping the legend alive. I find it all a little bit sad." Says Ernest Fleischmann, executive director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic: "Bernstein's memory is best served by his music and his recordings and by the people he influenced."

Au contraire, says Thomas: "The people who are disturbed by it are those who think classical music ought to be way up on a pedestal, which is something my dad didn't believe in at all. He probably wouldn't have minded the T shirts a bit."

The truth is, he probably wouldn't have. Vulgarity and showmanship were always part of the Bernstein artistic ethos. Waggling his hips to Haydn, looking heavenward for motivation in Mahler, Lenny was a marketer's dream, and no one marketed himself more shrewdly than Mr. Music. It was a source of lifelong frustration to him that his serious works -- the symphonies, the operas, the Mass -- were not taken more seriously. But how could they be, when they don't add up to Tonight from West Side Story? It's as if Elvis wanted to be regarded as a troubadour or an actor.

This week's resurrection symphony may move tote bags but will do little to convince the skeptical of Bernstein's place in history; that's for succeeding generations to sort out. Less an American Mozart than a Saint-Saens, Bernstein was a glib, gifted musician whose ultimate worth seems today to be less than the sum of his many talents. "My time will come," said his favorite, Mahler, and it did. It may also for Lenny. But not just yet.

With reporting by Daniel S. Levy/New York