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Leonard Bernstein has always been a politically polarising figure, as his profile grew, a man who’s radical associations provoked serious concern amongst the American political establishment. What form this concern might have taken and how it might have impacted Bernstein’s career has until recently always been something of mystery. Last year The New Yorker‘s music critic Alex Ross undertook to wade through Bernstein eight-hundred page F.B.I. file, contemporary Whitehouse memos and tapes – the result is what Ross call ‘a three part multimedia tour of the latest Bernsteiniana’, a compelling portrait of Bernstein through the eyes of a nervous Nixon administration.

Ross reveals is an era of institutional paranoia thankfully consigned to history, nonetheless there is a strange kind of reverence implicit in the fear that surrounds Bernstein. It is a sad to think that the era when the work of a young composer might constitute a popular political and cultural force to challenge  government might also be behind us.

Alex Ross: The Bernstein Files

Introduction

Part 1: Bernstein and the F.B.I.

Part 2:  Bernstein and Nixon’s Plumbers

Part 3:  Bernstein in the Nixon tapes

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