Leonard Bernstein never had to say what a wonderful town New York was — his music said it for him.
“It was the only place he found on the planet that could keep up with him,” says Jamie Bernstein of her father, who, right up until his death in 1990, was a force of nature.
Conductor, composer and champion of civil liberties, “Lenny” gave us many things including Broadway’s “On the Town” — which just reopened at the Lyric Theatre to rave reviews. This was his New York.
The Dakota, 72nd Street and Central Park West
“My mother got sick around the time they moved in here, so there was a lot of sadness, but there was also a lot of happiness. We had a lot of glittering neighbors. Rudolf Nureyev was across the hall, and two floors above us was Lauren Bacall, who often came down pretending to complain about the piano noise, but she mostly wanted to say hi… My father and I were there the night John Lennon was shot. David Chapman was always hanging out at the gate, and that night we walked right past him…I was up there playing the piano and heard the shots, but I didn’t know what they were until my son called and told me . . . My father poured us both a big Scotch and we sat there together and shook for hours.”
The Ed Sullivan Theater, Broadway between West 53rd and 54th streets
“My father didn’t make a distinction between one kind of music or another — as long as it was good. And he loved the Beatles. He thought they were incredibly talented songwriters. The summer of 1964, they came back to ‘The Ed Sullivan Show.’ My father had thought of setting some of John [Lennon]’s poems to music, and this got us invited to their dress rehearsal! When we got there, my father was escorted backstage while my brother and I watched acrobats and everybody rehearse until someone fetched us. A door with a star on it opened and there they were — John, Paul and George, but not Ringo: He’d found himself another dressing room because the others were eating hamburgers with onions and Ringo hated onions! My father was sitting there, smoking away . . . Paul was making small talk while John and George were arguing about whether they had to wear their Chesterfield jackets.”
Family home, 895 Park Ave., at 79th Street
“My mother [Felicia Montealegre, right, with Leonard, Jamie and son Alexander] put on a get-together [in 1970] to raise money for young men from the Black Panther Party who were accused of trying to blow up Bloomingdale’s. Tom Wolfe crashed the party. It was a low-key event, and then my father arrived after a rehearsal of Beethoven’s ‘Fidelio.’ He was all fired up, and he just took over. It’s all in Tom Wolfe’s book [‘Radical Chic’], quoted out of context . . . There was all this awful blow-back, but that day, [my mother] didn’t know it: I remember her sitting on my father’s lap, looking so happy. It was the last happy day in our family.”
Carnegie Hall, Seventh Avenue at 57th Street
“The Philharmonic had its home there before they built Lincoln Center. The very first Young People’s Concert was in 1957. The orchestra played the ‘William Tell Overture,’ and my dad stopped after a minute or so, turned to the audience and asked, ‘What’s that music about?’ Everyone chorused, ‘The Lone Ranger!’ He said, ‘That’s what I thought you’d say. Well, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t mean that at all. Music is just about notes,’ and that’s how his whole first show began.”