The political climate felt none too stable in 1986, something Bernstein had just experienced firsthand during an international tour with two of his beloved orchestras—the Israel Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic. Ronald Reagan was in his second term. Pan Am Flight 73 had been hijacked in Pakistan that September, after which a series of deadly terrorist bombings had taken place in Paris. Terrorist threats plagued the Israel Philharmonic’s tour, and Bernstein was “heavily guarded,” as he put it, yielding a situation where “the more protection one has, the more danger is implied.” Thus he turned his speech into a rumination on the metastatic nature of fear.
