The Leonard Bernstein Letters Audiobook

Quotes

• “Bernstein’s versatility and ambition were such that he spent a lot of time trying to figure out who he was—which also meant searching for American music and for the future of music generally. This book doesn’t resolve Bernstein’s quest. But it’s an invaluable resource, and the quest itself continues to fascinate and to matter.”

  — Wall Street Journal

• “Exhaustive, thrilling, [and] indispensable.”

  — USA Today

• “With their intellectual brilliance, humor and wonderful eye for detail, Leonard Bernstein’s letters blow all biographies out of the water. His galaxy of correspondents includes Stephen Sondheim, Boris Pasternak and Jacqueline Kennedy. Full of fresh information and the authentic voice of a constant seeker.”

  — Economist (London)

• “His collaborator Betty Comden once noted, in a letter to Bernstein, that he saved ‘every scrap of correspondence.’ You will be grateful…a rich collection of letters to and from Bernstein, filled with revelations about his musical and personal lives.”

  — New York Times

• “Bernstein emerges as highly literate, compassionate, astonishingly busy, and gifted almost beyond measure.”

  — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

• “A rich selection…Alive with spontaneous intelligence, Leonard Bernstein’s letters display exactly this unforced intimacy, though there were moments when he no doubt knew that posterity was listening in.”

  — Times Literary Supplement (London)

• “His letters have a tremendous zest and a good journalistic eye, too, and since he was often at the right place at the right time, at some of the key moments in his twentieth-century history, this gives them a wider interest.”

  — Sunday Times (London)