"Dinner with Lenny" by Jonathan Cott

[James Meckley]

I just finished reading a new book by Jonathan Cott, Dinner with Lenny (Oxford University Press, 2013). Mr. Cott also wrote Conversations with Glenn Gould (Little, Brown and Company, 1984). On November 20, 1989, Mr. Cott conducted an interview with Leonard Bernstein which lasted 12 hours straight and produced a transcript of over 32,000 words. Rolling Stone magazine published an 8,000 word condensation of that interview to commemorate Bernstein's 70th birthday, but the entire interview has been published here for the first time.

I won't presume to write a full review; you can find any number of amateur reviews at Amazon.com. I'll simply recommend it enthusiastically to anyone who cares in the least about Leonard Bernstein and his art. I'll also quote one brief passage—as allowed by the fair use doctrine of US copyright law—which might be of interest to members of this board.

* * *

Cott: Did you yourself once meet [Alma Mahler]?

Bernstein: Certainly. She tried to get me to bed. Many years ago she was staying in the Hotel Pierre in New York—she had attended some of my New York Philharmonic rehearsals—and she invited me for "tea"—which turned out to be "aquavit"—then suggested we go to look at some "memorabilia" of her composer husband in her bedroom....She was generations older than I. And she had her hair all frizzed up and was flirting like mad. (I spent a half hour in the living room, a minute or two less in the bedroom.) She was really like a wonderful Viennese operetta. She must have been a great turn-on in her youth....But anyway, Mahler didn't pay enough attention to her—she needed a lot of satisfying, and he was busy writing his Sixth Symphony up in his little wood hut all night, and she was tossing around in bed. Mahler was terribly guilty about it all—when he gets to the "Alma" theme in the Scherzo of the Sixth Symphony, the margins of the score are filled with exclamations like "Almschi, Almschi, please don't hate me, I'm dancing with the devil!"

* * *

In addition to the titillating details revealed above, the attentive Mahler enthusiast will notice a couple of problems:

1) The so-called "Alma" theme is found in the first movement of the Sixth, not in the Scherzo.

2) The inscriptions about dancing with the devil were found in the margins of the unfinished Tenth, not the Sixth.

Since Mr. Cott worked from an audio recording of the entire 12-hour interview and Mr. Bernstein was provided with with a full transcript for verification and correction, these errors must be attributed to Bernstein's faulty memory—forgivable given that he was already ill and would be dead within a year.

Recommended.

James

[barry guerrero]

That's so utterly wrong that one wonders if it isn't a case of Cott misquoting Bernstein. Maybe Bernstein was really drunk at the time (?).

[justininsf]

That's so utterly wrong that one wonders if it isn't a case of Cott misquoting Bernstein. Maybe Bernstein was really drunk at the time (?).

Wrong because of the score details or wrong because we had to hear about an older Alma trying to bed a younger Lenny?   

[James Meckley]

Cott reports that Bernstein was drinking vodka straight-up during the interview and then of course there was wine with dinner—a fine California Cabernet Sauvignon, no doubt.

James

[barry guerrero]

"Wrong because of the score details or wrong because we had to hear about an older Alma trying to bed a younger Lenny?"

I'll go with door number one. Door number two seems fairly predictable.