Once more with Gustavo

Norman Lebrecht

● IT HAS BEEN 65 YEARS since the New York Philharmonic last appointed the right conductor, so long ago that hardly anyone alive remembers it except as legend. The ensuing vacancy of imagination has meant that every well-intentioned baton since then has been held up against Leonard Bernstein’s and found wanting in every department — music, human and media. Bernstein transformed the Philharmonic. He imported symphonies by Mahler, Nielsen and Ives, promoted living American composers, reached out to young audiences as no maestro before or since and used the power of television to proselytise orchestral music across a mass audience. It helped that most viewers knew him as the super-cool composer of West Side Story. Bernstein was music director for a record 11 years. His successors were doomed by comparison.…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2023

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