Classical Music Won’t Be Saved By Another Leonard Bernstein: Alex Ross

“His charisma was indeed potent, but as Bernstein recedes into history he seems more a product of his time than an agent of transformation. … The aspirational America of the mid-twentieth century was looking for a Bernstein — a native genius who could knock off Broadway tunes as fluently as he conducted Brahms — and one was duly found. There will not be another, not because talent is lacking but because the culture that fostered him is gone.”