Free The Leonard Bernstein Letters by Leonard Bernstein

[1940]
    Dear Lenny,
    Enclosed please find an impressive looking letter – and my love. I'm glad New Hampshire was on hand to welcome you and it sounds nice up there. You may ormay not know that we all crashed Leonard Lyons’ column in an item about Aaron [Copland] being the distinguished page-turner at the telecast. 71 Adolph has spoken to Aaron and he is amused and amazed – and not the least bit angry.
    There is a slight lull. Judy [Holliday] is away. The rest of us are doing some work and hoping that by the end of the week we'll be able to take a day or two off too. A dull letter, I know – but I'll write soon again – and I hope I'll have something to enclose as well.
    Love,
    B
    Do you want those lovely slacks? – and jacket?
    55. Leonard Bernstein to Renée Longy Miquelle 72
    Hanover, NH
    1 July 1940
    Chère Mme,
    Lunch is calling, and I have but a moment to write – the television venture being over, I am safely ensconced in this charming but dull college town with the Silvermans 73 (or should it be Silvermen?) and working, actually. I see nobody, but lead a quiet, useful and pleasant existence. I've already learned Beethoven's 4th and Scheherazade . Starting Copland's Music for the Theatre today. Practicing. Composing. The fiddle Sonata almost prêt. Leaving for the Cranwell School, Lenox (my next address: please write) on the 5th, probably. Aaron told me that I might have to conduct Randall Thompson's Symph. (No. 2, naturellement) the first week, since that's when Randy will be there. Kouss, in searching around for the person to do it, suddenly said to Copland (so goes the tale) “ your Bernstein!” I don't know.
    Nothing to do but pray. And perk up about the abroad situation. It's getting exciting now; Russia, it seems, is going to have a lot to say about what Germany does, soon, and forcibly. Again, we can only pray. […]
    Lenny
    56. Betty Comden to Leonard Bernstein
    17 July 1940
    Lenny dear,
    Kouss may have been impressed by your conducting – but his feelings cannot compare with mine. I'm thrilled at the thoughts of your concerts and I absolutely will make it my business to get up to see you somehow this summer. But actually conducting! And after all that silly fretting over whether or not you'd memorize Scheherazade in time. […] It's wonderful about the conducting and the summer sounds magnificent for you. […]
    57. Leonard Bernstein to Kenneth Ehrman
    17 Lake Avenue, Sharon, MA
    [August 1940]
    Ken,
    I was very desolated that your visit was so short – it hit me afterwards that I hadn't really seen you outside of some small talk & some big talk forced in somewhere to give your return significance. I wanted so to reestablish us again – & then you left. I find you, thank God (?) very much the same Ken, the most pleasant article to be with I've ever encountered, cool, and unimpressed by most superficial things, more impressed than he will admit by the basicker things. I was touched by your reaction to the hundreds of busy little Tanglewood bees: if it caused the slightest stirring up in yr creative being, I feel a Messiah, indirectly. Hast du ein eingiges Wort geschrieben? Is Palo Alto? Does your family intrigue you any more? You should keep away from it. It's a kind of monstrosity anyway, as you will admit – but you can't live in a sideshow.
    Come east, where I can see you often.
    Tanglewood was a complete success. Where did you leave? – yes, at the Bach, which was done standing up & [Putnam] Aldrich playing the harpsichord. The performance was an ode to Viola Wasterlain. Scheherazade was wonderfully exciting, despite some bad slips from the solos, & there followed the Haydn Symphonie concertante , the Brahms Haydn Variations , Copland's Outdoor Overture (at the Allies Benefit!), & a performance I wish you could have seen & heard of Stravinsky's Histoire du Soldat with my own words (local color) served up as a surprise for Koussie on his terrace at a tea he gave for the school. A hit. Kouss is