The new online issue of “Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs,” the newsletter of the Leonard Bernstein Office, publishes an essay of mine suggesting that Bernstein’s relationship to Dmitri Shostakovich is a “Rosetta Stone” in the Bernstein odyssey. It’s a glimpse of my book-in-progress: “Bearing Witness: The American Odyssey of Leonard Bernstein.” You can read the whole thing here. What follows is an excerpt:
Twenty-eight years [after Leonard Bernstein took the New York Philharmonic to Soviet Russia], the expatriate Russian pianist Vladimir Feltsman talked to Bernstein about his impressions. “Bernstein’s visit to Russia was very important at that particular time — the scent of freedom was beguiling and irresistible,” Feltsman remembered, and added: “His most precious memory was meeting Boris Pasternak.” But Dmitri Shostakovich’s validating handshake proved a more lasting influence.
In the long view, Bernstein’s significance is broadly humanistic. An exemplary cultural missionary, he served a function never as necessary as today, and never before as absent.
Bernstein the humanist was acutely prescient. He prophetically understood that classical music would dissipate from the American experience unless or until it struck deeper New World roots. He foretold the erosion of the American arts. He fought the erasure of American cultural memory. The demise of the Kennedy White House, in which he had been a guest, tarnished his American dreams. Then came Vietnam and Watergate. His signature concerts included memorials for JFK and RFK. . . .
As Bernstein appreciated earlier than others, Shostakovich’s ultimate genius was to bear witness. The Bernstein odyssey, in its many dimensions, equally bore eloquent witness to a twentieth century of American ferment and travail. In the Bernstein saga, the Bernstein/Shostakovich nexus is a neglected Rosetta Stone.
This article makes a persuasive argument that Leonard Bernstein’s interactions with Dmitri Shostakovich function as a “Rosetta Stone” for understanding Bernstein’s evolving role as a cultural witness in the twentieth-century American experience. The idea that Bernstein drew from Shostakovich not just musical inspiration but a model for testifying through art helps illuminate Bernstein’s humanist impulses especially during times of national crisis. The essay frames Bernstein’s public work — memorial concerts, critiques of cultural amnesia, advocacy for deeper roots in American cultural life — as part of a continuum of artists who refuse complacency. It reminds us that music can do more than aesthetic work: it can preserve memory, sustain dissent, affirm humanity.
This article intriguing casts Bernstein’s engagement with Shostakovich as a kind of “Rosetta Stone,” suggesting that Bernstein’s later roles—as cultural interpreter, humanist advocate, and witness to his era—found a model in Shostakovich’s example. Horowitz’s framing not only deepens our understanding of Bernstein’s ambitions beyond performance, but also encourages us to see how artists can carry moral weight in turbulent times. In doing so, the essay reminds us that musical relationships are never purely aesthetic—they can be political, personal, and prophetic.