Leonard Bernstein repeteert met Concertgebouworkest *7 oktober 1987
Ernst von Siemens Music Prize 1987
Leonard Bernstein
Aus der Laudatio von August Everding:
You are Musica viva, for some, musica vivissima. To be Bernstein means to be a conductor, composer, pianist, author, teacher, television personality, podium star, and social figure—and also to “aspire” to be a humanist, idealist, and moralist. You have never been content with the status quo. Your passion is imagination. Imagination causes your suffering, but it also brings you hope—it is the very principle of hope that has always carried you—and us—along. Music is always an open question, the “unanswered question.”
Your answer is always: Yes. The courage to embrace this positivism, which is not a cheap belief in the future, is a response to a question and not merely a statement. It is neither a tranquilizer nor a harmonizing bridge over an abyss. Your Second Symphony describes the age of fear. Your hope dwells in the wake of your despair. In the search for truth—a “bacchanalian feast” without a single sober participant, as Hegel puts it—one must be “intoxicated by imagination.” You are bold enough to repeatedly tell your students and listeners that imagination alone is insufficient without skill. You are a geyser—sometimes too hot, sometimes too uncontrollable, yet often a “quiet place.” But you have declared: “I’m always marching for something,” and this ongoing journey has both kept you young and fascinated the young.
