A penthouse in west Manhattan, not far from Central Park.

The furnishing of the apartment is dignified, the art on the walls is genuine.

Books are stacked on the shelves, there is a Steinway grand piano in one room, and there are photos in small frames everywhere.

They show a family of five, but also a number of 20th-century celebrities from culture and politics, sometimes chatting with the family man, sometimes posing with him.

The apartment looks like a place of remembrance and, as the host says, it is: “Nobody lives here.

We use the apartment for family reunions and then someone sometimes stays over.”

Christian Riethmuller

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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"We" means Jamie, Nina and Alexander Bernstein, the three children of the man in the photos: Leonard Bernstein, composer, conductor and musical creator of the worldwide hit "West Side Story", the story about two young lovers in New York who come from two opposite worlds.

Alexander Bernstein, now 67, points out the window and says: "When I was a kid, the excavators rolled in this area and tore down the old houses in the neighborhood, not least to build Lincoln Center a few blocks away," that cultural center took with them Opera and concert halls, in other words, where Leonard Bernstein would later triumph as conductor of the New York Philharmonic.

He had already composed the “West Side Story” by then;

the stage work, premiered in 1957 based on an idea and with choreographies by Jerome Robbins, the book by Arthur Laurents and the lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, captured an atmosphere of New York in the 1950s that has become timeless.

Alexander Bernstein's own recollections of the piece also go back to these years: "It must have been the time of recording for the first disc.

Anyway, my dad was into the music at the time, and I know my sister Jamie and I listened to that record pretty much non-stop after that.

In 1961 I also saw the famous film starring Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer and Rita Moreno.

However, it took a long time before I saw 'West Side Story' on stage for the first time.

The play was no longer being played on Broadway at the time.”

In the meantime he has seen it hundreds of times, at operas, in famous theaters, as an amateur play.

And he still loves her, although the success of the piece at the time meant that his father, not least famous as a presenter of classical music on television, came home even less often.

"My father traveled a lot with orchestras all over the world," the son remembers the long absences, but emphasizes: "When he was at home, he devoted himself to us, laughed and played with us."

Although the premiere of "West Side Story" is now 65 years ago, it has lost none of its effectiveness: "The Romeo and Juliet motif, the great, the tragic love;

then the fights between the two gangs, the conflicts, the struggle for identity and a place to belong;

In a figurative sense, these challenges and feelings exist everywhere in the world and are understood everywhere,” says Alexander Bernstein, describing the unchanged relevance of the piece, which is still being performed in the original version.

Strict criteria for commercial requests

This will also be the case for the next five decades.

The heirs of the four authors are strict about the granting of performance rights.

For the Bernsteins, Alexander, as Vice President of the Leonard Bernstein Office, has the role of evaluating inquiries and then signing the contracts together with the other representatives of the heirs.

And applications are plentiful, not least from schools, colleges and universities where West Side Story continues to be popular.

"If the concept is convincing, we are happy to allow such groups to stage the show," says Bernstein, who himself worked as a teacher for many years and also staged "West Side Story" at a school.

However, the criteria for commercial inquiries are much stricter.

Although new perspectives on the piece are appreciated, all four parties would then have to agree to the changes, which is not always uncomplicated, says Bernstein.

A few years ago, when we were asked whether we could animate the "West Side Story" and draw the two gangs, the Jets and the Sharks, as dogs and cats, the idea went too far for the heirs.