How To Take The Cake:

From The Economist's review of Barry Seldes' Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician:

Bernstein died two years later, his lifelong wish to complete “That One Important Piece”, as he described it in his final letter to his business manager, left as unfulfilled as his longing to see liberal democracy flourish in America.

Why did the popular, powerful and prodigiously gifted Bernstein never compose that masterpiece? This is the central question Barry Seldes asks in his new political biography. The usual answer turns on the suggestion that Bernstein’s talents were overstretched by his heavy conducting, recording and publicity schedules. Critics also like to carp, pointing out that, although he was a brilliant musician, Bernstein somehow lacked the depth of thought and vision necessary to produce a genuine masterpiece.

Mr Seldes’s answer is different. Bernstein, he says, never wrote “That One Important Piece” because the only audience for which he could have written it—an American citizenry united by progressive liberalism—failed to materialise.

That's all kinds of crazy. So crazy it makes me want to read the book.

Bernstein At His Worst

There's just no pussy footing around what an absolute turd burglar of a piece Bernstein's Mass is. I was just listening to Baltimore rehearse it at Carnegie, and it is done no favors by their production.

I don't know why orchestras can't wrap their head around this, but once you have a rhythm section playing with you, you've got to mic everything. You can't leave half of the acoustic up to chance. Well, you can, but the result is an awful goop of a sound which should be an embarrassment to any self-respecting musician. No orchestra would ever consciously play out of tune, but they are perfectly content (and oblivious to) bad sound projection.

Jubilant Sykes was marking most of his part, but he does sound like he'll be the one bright spot in an otherwise miserable evening. He's got a fantastic, complex voice.

Beyond that, nothing else is worth hearing, unless you are hardcore into Bernstein or music theater. The street chorus is chock full of musical theater singers all overacting their hearts out. Marin Alsop is along for the ride, rather than driving the piece, and it's just a shame to see so much time and money wasted on such crap.

Bernstein was a musician of the first rank, and a composer of the third rank. He punched out some of my all-time favorite music, but his ambition was so much greater. He had the ultimate masterpiece complex: feeling that every piece needed to be a 'masterpiece'. Sadly, the more he tried to write great music, the more his efforts showed. Bernstein just always reminds me of someone standing on his tiptoes to try and seem taller than he really is.

There are great moments in Mass, but they are too few and far between to be worth the effort of excavation.