Wow, Lenny, what happened? Almost 25 years in the grave. I remember receiving the news of your death, on October 14, 1990, only 12 days after the passing of Aaron Copland. It was a horrible one-two for American music.
The classical music scene still seemed robust when you were alive, and it was actually exciting to walk into Tower Records, pre-internet, and find one of your new releases, with the gold Deutsche Grammophon cartouche – back when Deutsche Grammophon was still Deutsche Grammophon – displayed in one of those ludicrous blister packs.
Those were the days before much of the more interesting material you recorded for Columbia had been reissued by Sony. Your earlier, fantastic Schumann cycle hadn’t even made it to CD. My adrenaline would skyrocket for a new recording of American music. Copland? Bought! A re-recording of the Roy Harris and William Schuman Symphonies No. 3? Ka-ching!
While there are so many talented performers out there today, few of them have your larger than life personality, and none of them have your media presence. Where are the Bernsteins? The Horowitzes? The Pavarottis?
Of course, a lot of the change has to do with a break of the stranglehold on the market by major record labels with major marketing budgets. Also, in a sense, the mystique of the classical superstar has been swapped for the grass roots efforts of musicians eager to reach out to the public by way of performances at bars and in pop-up concerts. Not a bad thing for the performers or the music, but the landscape is certainly different.
There was a time when opera singers and violinists would be featured on late night talk shows, or pianists and guitarists would turn up on television commercials. They were artists, but they were also celebrities. In a sense, it was what was really needed to keep classical music in the public eye, if not the public ear, so that people understood that the music was out there, and it could be big, a viable alternative to pop.
Even when you were doing something purely educational, they would put you on TV. You were that rare combination of first rate music-making and Hollywood pizzazz. Happy birthday, Lenny. You sure are missed.
Rudolf Firkušný sells sneakers for Nike:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVKWBrVqCzs
Pavarotti on “The Tonight Show”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDMrLuK24r4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC1vaeU1UQk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWNJRou4lKs
Leonard Bernstein “Young People’s Concerts”: What is Melody?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AFovpvDRCI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O09V4NQkOKI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_pPeBg3Tb8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTmrGbwmX7w