Later I learn, as I had guessed, that he s a pianist not yet recognized. At a press conference, a disheveled type pushes toward me. I hope you live long enough to take back everything you ve ever written about Leonard Bernstein, he growls, and shoves off before I can answer. If I took back everything , the ratio of yea to nay would probably be exactly what it is now.
Some people have selective memories.
And I always weep buckets at the end of West Side Story . Changing my mind, through the discovery of new evidence against a long-held prejudice or simply through a sudden realignment of the gray cells, is one of my favorite exercises, even when as recently, alas it proves futile. It got me to the Philharmonic s final Stravinsky program, the Green Umbrella event at Zipper Hall three weeks ago, despite my previous words of displeasure toward the dry-point music of the composer s late years. Among my fellow Sibeliophobes, after all, the Seventh Symphony holds a place of honor because of its brevity. Abraham and Isaac was the major novelty on the Stravinsky program, a setting by the octogenarian composer of biblical verses, set to what I still hear as random zigzag lines vaguely related to 12-tone techniques Stravinsky attempted to swallow in his late years.