An early letter from his friend the pianist Shirley Gabis sums up the Bernstein conundrum: ‘it makes me sore as hell that there is perhaps something deep down inside you that is honest, sincere, and good that the outside you ignores … Your driving ambition to be the most versatile creature on earth will kill any possibility of you becoming a truly great artist in any one of the talents you possess.’ The struggle between the self-regarding performer and the genuine artist was one that would continue all his life.

Much has been written by and about Bernstein, from Humphrey Burton’s highly praised biography (1994) through Schuyler Chapin’s charming memoir (1992) to the rather embarrassingly self-indulgent conversation with Jonathan Cott, Dinner with Lenny (2013). Now we have a collection of his letters.

Leonard Bernstein
(photograph by Carl Van Vechten)

In editing them, Nigel Simeone has taken on a herculean task made more so as he quite rightly includes letters to as well as from Bernstein. The lyricist, scriptwriter, and lifelong friend Betty Comden commented on the fact that he ‘save[d] every scrap of correspondence you get, from Koussevitzky’s pages on life, music and your career to Auntie Clara’s hot denunciations of meat’. The sheer volume of material has forced Simeone to concentrate on letters that focus on Bernstein’s musical career and his private life. This may be the reason why one forms an impression of a man obsessed only with music and himself. We get very little comment on the political and social upheavals of the period from a man who was so involved in them. Perhaps a further volume will redress the balance. There is one omission, though, which is puzzling. In his biography, Humphrey Burton quotes letters from Tom Cothran, the man for whom Bernstein left his wife, which are perceptive and bracing. Simeone, however, has chosen not to include any correspondence between the two.

A volume of letters cannot, of course, take the place of a biography. Major moments may be passed over simply because the usual correspondents were all in the same place. While many individual concerts are mentioned, there is (for instance) only a passing reference to Bernstein’s breakthrough 1943 concert substituting for the ailing Bruno Walter. On the other hand, we are fortunate that Bernstein’s wife, Felicia, was visiting relatives in Chile during the try-outs and opening night of West Side Story in 1957. His letters to her give us a real sense of the hysterical hyperactivity of the last days before a Broadway opening. What is lost in completeness is made up for in immediacy.

Musically, Bernstein had three major mentors: the conductors Sergei Koussevitzky and Dimitri Mitropoulos, and the composer Aaron Copland. The letters reveal his very different relationships with each of them. With Koussevitzky he is at first the humble acolyte: ‘no matter how much time elapses without seeing you, you are always with me, guiding my work, providing the standards by which I measure my progress in our art.’ As his career progresses, there are tensions between the two of them, mainly concerning Koussevitzky’s disapproval of Bernstein’s Broadway ventures, but the affection and respect on Bernstein’s part never wavers.

Things are very different with Mitropoulos. Bernstein’s letters to Mitropoulos appear not to have survived, but the Greek conductor’s letters show clearly the effect the handsome young musician had on the older, sexually repressed conductor: ‘I think it is better that you look at me as you wish to … otherwise you would be disappointed. And, dear boy, I need your appreciation, your respect, your love!’ These he had until it came time for Bernstein to ease him out of the directorship of the New York Philharmonic in 1957. Even after that brutal knifing, Mitropoulos is still enchanted. A month before his untimely death he writes: ‘I want to assure you that your wonderful and justified development in the artistic musical world is the best gratification for me since the time I first met you in Boston.’ A prime example of the Edwin Denby remark Aaron Copland quotes in another letter: ‘It’s the thrill of needing, not the delight of having.’

Bernstein’s relationship with Copland was the closest and most important of all his musical connections and their letters to each other are full of affection and humour. One feels that Bernstein is being completely sincere when he concludes his panegyric to Copland at the 1979 Kennedy Centre Honours: ‘my master, my idol, my sage, my shrink, the closest thing to a composition teacher I ever had, my guide, my counselor, my elder brother, my beloved friend.’

Bernstein corresponded with many other composers, most regularly with Lukas Foss and Marc Blitzstein. He had a tempestuous relationship with the neurotic David Diamond, which culminated in the only really angry letter in the collection, brought on by Diamond’s indiscreet comments to the biographer Joan Peyser.

Once Bernstein had taken charge of the NYP, his correspondence with composers increased. There is a hilariously sycophantic letter from the avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen equating Bernstein with Mozart. There are also many collegial letters from other conductors. A fascinating one from Georg Solti urges Bernstein to forgive the past and work with the Vienna Philharmonic in spite of the Nazi connections of one of its members.

The Broadway and Hollywood side of Bernstein’s career brings in a whole new cast of correspondents, including a surprisingly charming Bette Davis. Here the major players are Betty Comden, her professional partner Adolph Green, and Jerome Robbins, the choreographer, director, and everyone’s nightmare. With the Comden–Green duo, it is Betty who writes the business letters and Adolph who supplies the gossip. Green had known Bernstein since they met at a summer camp in 1937, and although their working relationship tapered out in the 1950s, their friendship remained strong. In a fiftieth birthday letter to Bernstein he writes: ‘How happy your friendship makes me. It fills me with the simple and complicated joy of knowing there can be a meaning to life – that our haphazard and rambling walk is filled with endless connections into the past and the future.’ Robbins was Bernstein’s major collaborator, and luckily they were rarely in the same place at the same time, so that we can see how their projects developed. One can also get an idea of Robbins’s extraordinary sense of what does and doesn’t work theatrically and have some understanding as to why people were willing to work again and again with this impossible man.

The major correspondent from the moment she arrived in his life until their unhappy break was Felicia. If anyone really understood him, it was she. In an extraordinarily clear-sighted letter she accepts the fact of his homosexuality: ‘you are a homosexual and may never change – you don’t admit to the possibility of a double life, but if your peace of mind, your health, your whole nervous system depend on a certain sexual pattern what can you do?’ Their letters to each other over the long periods of separation are funny, perceptive, and loving. Burton portrays Bernstein as a lost soul after her death, and it’s easy to see why.

Fascinating as these letters indubitably are, they don’t really unravel the enigma that is Leonard Bernstein. While writing this, I have been listening to his majestic recording of the Beethoven Missa Solemnis, his seductive performance of Lukas Foss’s Song of Songs, and his incomparable Shostakovich Seventh. This is the real Bernstein and a refutation of Shirley Gabis’s claim that he could never become a great artist.