"...Bernstein looks mannered, overemotional, performatively in search of transcendence. (NY Times)

I couldn't disagree more. Bernstein's physical gestures and expressions were spontaneously born ENTIRELY from a profound understanding of the score as witness the actual MUSICAL results.

Leonard Bernstein's profound intellectual and expressive understanding of music is PRECISELY what allowed him to make spontaneous use of his body and emotions to convey the essence of a composer's work, not to mention how he helped bring Mahler to the fore.

The music department of the New York Times has no idea what music is then and now Harold C. Schoenberg, Zachary Wolfe, Jon Parales and Giovanni Russenello you all need to retire together with Tim Page of USC and Alex Ross of the New Yorker and Allan Zozinn of the WSJ. Please notice how none of them are women.

That would be a happy day for everyone including myself.

One thing you guys not dolls have in common with Alex Ross and Tim Page and Allan Zozinn and Kyle Gann and Leon Botstein is how much you love Richard Wagner who went in search of Indian ragas but never found them unlike myself.

And Adolf Hitler went in search of the American West like Vladimir Putin but like Billie Eilish he did not name his one man opera the Holocaust she is way above his pay grade like myself artistically.

And Vladimir Putin should retire, too. He's no Vladimir Horowitz in music or warfare unlike General Georgy Zhuhov or Prime Minister Winston Churchill to name a few.

- Michael Eric Robinson Longhi, November 2024, Los Angeles

 

© 2024 Michael Robinson All rights reserved

 

Michael Eric Robinson Longhi is a Los Angeles-based composer, programmer, pianist and musicologist. His 200 albums include 153 albums for meruvina and 47 albums of piano improvisations. Robinson has lectured at UCLA, Bard College and California State University Long Beach and Dominguez Hills among others at Ivy League universities and colleges and music conservatories.