Publisher: Harper
Pages: 400
Format: DRC
ISBN-10: 0062641352
ISBN-13: 9780062641359
Publisher: eBook | Hardcover | Paperback | Audiobook
The oldest daughter of revered composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein offers a rare look at her father on the centennial of his birth in a deeply intimate and broadly evocative memoir.
The composer of On the Town and West Side Story, chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic, television star, humanitarian, friend of the powerful and influential, and the life of every party, Leonard Bernstein was an enormous celebrity during one of the headiest periods of American cultural life, as well as the most protean musician in twentieth century America.
But to his eldest daughter, Jamie, he was above all the man in the scratchy brown bathrobe who smelled of cigarettes; the jokester and compulsive teacher who enthused about Beethoven and the Beatles; the insomniac whose 4 a.m. composing breaks involved spooning baby food out of the jar. He taught his daughter to love the world in all its beauty and complexity. In public and private, Lenny was larger than life.
Bernstein wrote my favourite musical and has some other interesting music pieces. It is always interesting to get a inside information in a biography about a person you only know as a name.
It took me a long time to read this book though. The beginning was promising. Obviously the childhood and how Jamie is experiencing the whole thing is one of the most interesting parts of the story if you want to know more about her life with. But when she grows up and tries to build up her own life the story slows down significantly. I even considered not finishing the book but there was still some pull.
The most interesting in the second half of the book is the influence Bernstein is still having on the lives of his children. In the choices they make about their futures, how they keep returning to take care of him and his legacy.
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