This event will be held in person only.
Program to be followed by a catered reception.

Beth Am is delighted to welcome back Dr. Richard Kogan as the 2025 Guthaner guest lecturer (his presentation last year on George Gershwin was such a hit that we invited him back for this year!).

Dr. Kogan has a distinguished career both as a psychiatrist and as a concert pianist, and has gained renown for his lecture/concerts that explore the role of music in healing and the influence of psychological forces and psychiatric illness on the creative output of the great composers. This year he will present a discussion on Leonard Bernstein, whose impact on the musical consciousness of America cannot be overstated. Richard Kogan tackles the story of this cultural colossus, focusing on the creation of his towering masterpiece of musical theater, West Side Story. After its opening night, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter approached the composer and declared, “The history of America is now changed.”

Richard Kogan’s concert lecture audiences hear him recount Bernstein’s life “from his first cigarette to his last dying day”, interspersing oral history and anecdote with performances of Somewhere, Maria, Tonight, One Hand-One Heart, America and more.

Dr. Kogan offers a psychiatric perspective on Bernstein’s complex personality in this program as well. He identifies Bernstein as a man of voracious appetites, the satisfaction of which caused enormous guilt. Still, Dr. Kogan points to Bernstein’s remarkable capacity to sustain contradictions. He cites Bernstein’s balancing of the tensions between elite and mass appeal, between emotions and the intellect and between tradition and innovation. Dr. Kogan contrasts these with Bernstein’s irreconcilable bisexual conflicts and his struggles to balance the life of a composer and the life of a performer.

Please register using the form below by Friday, April 25.

Richard Kogan has a distinguished career both as a musician and as a physician. Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and Artistic Director of the Weill Cornell Music and Medicine Program, he has been praised for his “eloquent, compelling and exquisite playing" by the New York Times, and the Boston Globe wrote that "Kogan has somehow managed to excel at the world's two most demanding professions." Dr. Kogan has gained renown for his lecture/concerts that explore the origins of creativity in the great composers. A master storyteller, he has given these presentations at music festivals, medical conferences and scholarly symposia throughout the world.

The Ernst Guthaner Endowment Fund for Cultural and Educational Programming was created by Beth Am member Diana Guthaner in memory of her beloved father, Ernst Guthaner. Each year, the Guthaner fund sponsors a special program relating to Jewish culture and education. Please consider a donation to the Guthaner Fund.