What Makes an American Impresario?

L awrence “Larry” Perelman was a close and longtime friend of William F. Buckley Jr. Larry played the piano at the famous fortnightly recitals at the Buckley maisonette on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where National Review talent, celebrity acquaintances, and classical musicians congregated for dinner and performance with the Buckleys. Larry had dinner with Buckley the night before he passed away on February 26, 2008, and was to play a recital for Bill and friends the next day. Bill passed away, and the recital never happened.

With the release of his American Impresario: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Elements of American Character, Perelman elaborates on classical music, its place in our society, and his friendship with Buckley.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

AN: How did Buckley change your life by replying to your letter?

LP: It all started with a “thank you” letter I wrote to Bill in 1994 when I was 18. I offered him a piano recital as a thank you present for having emboldened Soviet Jewish immigrants like my parents to make it in America. Had Bill not replied to my first letter, I would not be sitting here and living an incredible life in New York. It was extraordinary that he wrote back and invited me to play at the maisonette. It’s the classic American dream. When I look back at myself at 18, there was something exciting I conveyed to Bill. I wasn’t just another young conservative looking for an internship but wrote to him about music.

A key part of my book deals with the importance of Bill’s answering my letters. He made it the responsibility of his staff and himself to answer every letter that came in. He was one of the most prolific letter writers of the 20th century. It tells you everything about communication and responsibility. Answering letters equals not taking people for granted. Nowadays, people hide behind excuses like “I have too many emails and text messages.” Bill was the gold standard even when email was still a relatively new thing in the early 2000s. He would answer everything. How many emails do you think Bill had in his inbox? Hundreds! The thing about Bill Buckley was that he made it a responsibility to answer letters. For him, it was a joy to see what was out there. He was brilliant and had this openness and an insatiable curiosity.

AN: You open American Impresario by stating Buckley “forced” you to learn Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations” for a fortnightly recital. Have you fallen in love with the piece?

LP: It was a piece I detested as a kid. It’s the last piano piece Beethoven wrote, and in some ways his magnum opus but also a microcosm of his entire life. I had a deal with Bill that I would learn any piano piece he wanted, within reason. He kept asking for “the Diabelli,” one of Beethoven’s toughest works, and I was reluctant to do so until Bill became quite ill in 2007. I then took a look at it and really came to like the piece a lot. It’s a conundrum of a piece. Beethoven was given a simple waltz by a publisher [Anton Diabelli] and asked to write one variation; dozens of other composers were also asked to contribute single variations to what would be a vanity project for the publisher. However, Beethoven being Beethoven took four years and wrote 33 variations instead!

I played it for Bill and some of his siblings at a surreal gathering in Stamford, Conn., on February 19, 2008, a week before he passed away. That was the last time I played for Bill.

AN: Why do you think Buckley kept asking for this piece?

LP: It’s a fascinating piece. I can’t say I ever completely fell in love with it, but I can say I really understand what Bill saw in it. Its celestial conclusion is akin to one reflecting on one’s entire life. He did push for it emphatically one year before he passed away, so that’s what I’m going on here.

Bill’s interest in it might also have been a link with “The Goldberg Variations,” another favorite of his. “The Goldbergs” as he would call the piece has 32 variations while the Diabelli has 33. Beethoven might have wanted to outdo Bach. It seems that Bill loved variations. He was super creative and someone who would take one idea and build on another idea repeatedly and develop all these different thoughts. If we look at Bill in general, and as much as we say National Review “stands athwart history, yelling Stop,” Bill still always found a way to reinvent things. He had to. He was an incredible inventor, coming up with ideas all the time. His “thrice weekly” columns, as he called them, thousands of them, were always variations on themes. Bill’s writing was musical as was his way of speaking. There are many parallels between Bill and the great composers. Bill actually wanted to be a pianist as a teenager but didn’t have the requisite talent. Who knows — if he had more talent as a pianist, the world may not have had Bill Buckley. Can you imagine?

AN: Why did Buckley think arts education matters? Why do you?

LP: When I met Bill for the second time in 1998, he had just learned from his friend Schuyler Chapin, New York City’s commissioner for cultural affairs, that music education was being reintroduced into city schools. His idea of music education was what he and his siblings experienced while being tutored at their home Great Elm in Sharon, Conn. They sat in a room and were forced to listen to Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and the great masters for 45 minutes nearly every day. As Bill said, after six months of this, all the Buckley kids loved classical music. Bill gave me a life-changing research grant in 1998, which brought me back to New York to determine what had happened to decades’ worth of students who never studied music in New York City public schools.

Bill asked me, “What does the lack of good music do to you?” It proved to be a difficult question to answer, but I made a valiant effort. Today, my thinking on the value of music education remains nearly the same. I believe that if you go through life without listening to Mozart and Verdi, you are in some ways less aware of the greatness of what it means to be a human being. What we must realize is that there are tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of people in this country who haven’t heard truly great music. They don’t even know it exists. This directly relates to growing classical music’s audience. I find it criminal that every concert hall and opera house isn’t packed. The inherent greatness of this art form should be self-evident, but it isn’t and won’t be until we prioritize it at home, in schools, and in the media landscape.

Bill wanted everyone to acknowledge the greatness of Bach. His basic question was built on this assumption. He probably based it on his experience at Great Elm, but that wasn’t even the average student’s life back in the 1930s. My wife and young children listen to popular music, but they also appreciate classical music. I’m a co-founder and business strategy consultant at Carnegie Hall+, a performing arts streaming service. We have the best performing arts programming, such as the Vienna State Ballet’s production of Swan Lake, which was originally choreographed by Rudolf Nureyev and filmed in 2014. My two-year-old daughter hums the main theme from Swan Lake while my five-year-old hums Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. It shows that it’s as much about education as “brainwashing” the kids.

Classical music belongs to everyone — there are millions of musicians in non-Western countries who play and listen to classical music. Why is classical music revered globally? Because classical music is one of humanity’s greatest achievements.