Leonard Bernstein

"Composer, pianist, author, television personality, Harvard lecturer, cultural icon and conductor without peer, Leonard Bernstein was one of the most flamboyant and multifaceted musical giants of the twentieth century. His versatility and boundless energy were legendary. He captivated Broadway with such smash hits as On the Town and West Side Story, wrested and cajoled out of the world's best orchestras some of the most inspired performances ever heard, and introduced several generations of Americans to classical music with his "Omnibus" and "Young People's Concerts" television shows." "In the most richly detailed and in-depth biography of Bernstein yet written, author Humphrey Burton vividly brings to life this controversial and contradictory figure. Incorporating hundreds of interviews with family, friends and colleagues, as well as exclusive access to Bernstein's own rich legacy of letters and papers, Leonard Bernstein reveals the maestro as he has never been seen before. Admired by the world, he felt an almost desperate need to be loved; married to the beautiful actress Felicia Montealegre, and father of three children, he also engaged in passionate affairs - private and eventually public - with other men; the New York Philharmonic's most influential music director since Toscanini, he felt himself constantly torn between the rival claims of conducting and composing. We see a Bernstein who embraced the world with extraordinary passion, a man with an enormous appetite for the center stage who, his critics would charge, often squandered his seemingly inexhaustible talent and energy." "Bernstein's exuberant vitality and restless ambition are successfully brought to the page in this compelling portrait of one of the most beloved musical figures of our age."--Jacket.