Dearest Lenny: Letters from Japan and the Making of the World Maestro

by Mari Yoshihara (Author), Mari Yoshihara (Author)

• New

  Illustrated
  2019

  $38.08

  Through personal letters from little known Japanese individuals that had never been studied before, Dearest Lenny interweaves an intimate story of love and relationships with a history of Leonard Bernstein's extraordinary transformation from an American icon to the world maestro during the second half of the twentieth century. The passionate, articulate, moving letters of the two Japanese individuals-a woman who began writing fan letters to Bernstein in 1947 and became a close family friend, and a young man who fell in love with the maestro in 1979 and later became his business representative-portray the deeply personal meanings Bernstein and his music had at various stages of their lives. More eloquently than many reviews by critics and journalists, their letters convey how Bernstein's compositions, recordings, and performances touched his audiences around the world. They also paint a vivid picture of the historical, social, and economic context in which these two individuals' unusual relationships with Bernstein emerged and evolved. Dearest Lenny tells a story of the making of global Bernstein, shifting attention from Europe to Japan. The dramatic change in Japan's place in the world and its relationship to the United States during the Cold War decades shaped Bernstein's relationship to the country and to the two individuals in important ways. At the same time, Dearest Lenny is a story of relationships-between the two individuals and Bernstein, the United States and the world, art and commerce, artists and the state, private and public, conventions and transgressions, between dreams and realities-that were at the core of Bernstein's greatest achievements and challenges and that made him truly a maestro of the world.