“Who Is Gustav Mahler?” Leonard Bernstein’s 1960 Young People’s Concert and His Expression of Jewish Identity through a Continuation of Early Mahler Advocacy

Abstract

Leonard Bernstein is widely known for his advocacy of Gustav Mahler throughout the 1960s and beyond, which helped to catapult Mahler into classical musical stardom. But Bernstein’s most significant early contribution to Mahler’s reception was the 1960 Young People’s Concert entitled “Who Is Gustav Mahler?” Here, Bernstein created an argument for Mahler’s place in the classical musical canon by drawing on the precedent of other Jewish figures, including Bruno Walter, Oskar Fried, and Aaron Copland, as well as non-Jews such as Willem Mengelberg. A study of the language Bernstein used in his Young People’s Concert and its inspiration in earlier Mahler advocacy highlights a distinct relationship between Bernstein’s advocacy of Mahler and his self-expression as a Jewish American.