Mixed Media NEWS & REVIEWS Embraceable Bernstein The scene, Kronberg Castle, the ancient city of Elsinore on the Danish island of Zealand. An aerial camera shot hovers over the fog-engulfed castle. The fog parts, the camera zooms down for a close-up showing the top of the cas- tle's observation tower. And, accom- panying this scene, we hear a voice that intones: "This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind." The voice is that of Laurence Olivier who plays the title role of Hamlet in his masterful film — very possibly never to be equaled — of Shakespeare's play. I thought of this as I spent a very long time with two new three-CD sets from Sony Classical/Legacy: Essential Bernstein: Total Embrace — Composer and Essential Bernstein: Total Embrace — Conductor ($19.98 each). The discs comprise a "total embrace" of the great talent of Leonard Bernstein, the world- famous American musician who died in 1990 and would have been 85 years old in August. The opening paragraph of Bernstein's biography in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians terms him a "prodigiously gifted American conductor and composer, equally successful in writing sym- phonic music of profound content and strikingly effective Broadway 9/26 2003 112 shows, and, in the field of perform- ance, an interpreter of magnetic powers, exercising a charismatic spell on audiences in America and the world." He once said, "Life without music is unthinkable. ... That is why my part of Bernstein's life in music — which is to say, almost his total life. He wrote many other works, going back as far as 1938, when he wrote incidental music for Aristophanes' play The Birds. And, of course, he wrote a most popular film score for the motion picture On the Waterfront, of which he made an equally popular symphonic suite. He recorded piano pieces, his own and those of other composers. He conducted works at major opera houses in the world. He did immensely popular television pro- grams about music, originally aimed at young people, but certainly enjoyed by older people, too. He wrote books: Leonard Bernstein's Young Peoples Concerts for Reading and Listening, the very pop- ular The Joy of Music and others. He contact with music is a total embrace." The purpose of this "total embrace" of Bernstein's music is mainly to show the total dimensions of his talent. The set The Conductor consists of 29 tracks of recordings made from 1950 to 1975. It includes complete works and excerpts from works of Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Ravel, Bach, Bartok, Shostakovich, Debussy, Mozart, Copland, Haydn, Fernandez, Sibelius, Beethoven, Ives, Mahler, Verdi, Sousa, Berlioz and Brahms. One of the three discs of The Composer includes all or parts of his serious works: Chicester Psalms, Jeremiah, Symphony No. 1, Serenade — Agathon, Age of Anxiety, Symphony No. 2, I Hate Music, La Bonne Cuisine, Prelude, Fugue and Rif and Kaddish, Symphony No. 3. The other two discs are of his the- ater works and include parts of On the Town, Fancy Free (ballet), Peter Pan, Wonderful Town, Candide, West Side Story, Dybbuk, Facsimile, Trouble in Tahiti and Mass. So, all together, these six CDs are a retrospective of the many sides of the artistry of Leonard Bernstein. But even this extensive display of almost unbridled talent only shows a But why go on? It is enough to say that if something involved music, Leonard Bernstein was involved in it. It is known that Bernstein wished to be remembered as a composer of serious music, and to be remem- bered on a popular, as well as a criti- cal, scale. It is also known that Bernstein, beset by the urging of multiple muses, was seen by many in the world of music as a man "who could not make up his mind." Was he then a Hamlet? Did this prodigality prove to be his tragic flaw? Was there a tragic flaw? Who knows or will ever know? What, for instance, might he have produced had he concentrated his talent on serious classical music? What might he have written had he followed the classical side of his education after he had completed his three promising symphonies and not devoted so much of his time to writing his works for the theater? The answer to that question might quite legitimately be anoth- er question: What would have been lost had he not produced his enormously popular theater works? Rap hael Read It is a rare thing nowadays to discov- er a writer who can paint. Yet in his new novel, The German Money (Leapfrog Press; $14.95), Lev Raphael delivers a carefully com- posed canvas of muted winter colors, stone gray urban structures and vio- lent splashes of family discord. In his most recent works, a series of mystery novels set in the competi- tive atmosphere of university back- biting-, Raphael demonstrated his wit and ability to draw one into his boldly sketched characters. But in this new work, the writer gets to the heart of the matter, with a scalpel. Since the close of World War II, there have been hundreds, perhaps thousands of books penned by Holocaust survivors and their chil- dren. We have traveled this rutted road of literary guilt, torture and inevitable nightmare, and most often been rewarded with the gory details of the Jewish experience under the Nazis. However, in The German Money, we come upon a family of silence and secrets, viewed through the eyes of its narrator and his two siblings, Simon and Dina. With the death of their mother, a survivor who steadfastly refused to share a single detail of her wartime tri- als, the siblings contest not only the emotional Okemos- based author Lev Raphael —King Durkee Copley News Service FYI: For Arts and Entertainment related events that you wish to have considered for Out & About, please send the item, with a detailed description of the event, times, dates, place, ticket prices and publishable phone number, to: Gail Zimmerman, JN Out & About, The Jewish News, 29200 Northwestern Highway, Suite 110, Southfield, MI 48034; fax us at (248) 304-8885; or e-mail to gzimmerman@thejewishnews.com Notice must be received at least three weeks before the scheduled event. Photos are appreciated but cannot be returned. All events and dates listed in the Out & About column are subject to change.