In 2019, I attended a San Francisco Jewish Community Center event that featured author, Jamie Bernstein showcasing her book, Famous Father Girl. The eldest daughter of conductor/composer icon, Leonard Bernstein, she had released her memoir in step with her father’s Centennial Celebration that drew a reinvigorated interest in the conductor/composer’s life.
The book event: https://arioso7.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/famous-father-girl-author-jamie-bernstein-delights-a-crowd-of-lenny-lovers/
With a glimpse back at Jamie’s engaging book talk, I recalled her sneak peek revelation that a movie about “Lenny,” (specifically a Biopic) had acquired Steven Spielberg’s interest, and held promise as a developing project. Even a potential lead actor was leaked, though it surely was not Bradley Cooper.
I remember my heart sinking at the very idea of a “biopic.” At minimum, an actor playing Lenny would have to credibly mimic his towering conducting. Not possible, I thought.
I owned treasured memories of Lenny conducting Mahler Symphonies with his synthesis of free wheeling emotion and structural insight. I re-channeled his Berlin based Christmas 1989, triumphant “Ode to Joy”–choral movement from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. It celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall. Jamie had directed all eyes to a high mounted screen recreating this open air concert that had the monumental force of chorus and orchestra.
Over years, from earliest childhood, I had imbibed Bernstein in all his creative endeavors as conductor, pianist, composer and lecturer: I watched televised “Young People’s Concerts,” Masterclasses, Omnibus presentations, LIVE from Lincoln Center concerts, and in later years, you tube re-runs of symphonic repertoire from European capitals.
In 1976, as a native New Yorker, I attended a Philharmonic concert under Bernstein’s baton at Avery Fisher Hall, featuring Murray Perahia playing Schumann’s Piano concerto in ‘A’ minor. (Murray was my classmate at the NYC HS of Performing Arts) It was a moving collaboration. And I couldn’t forget Lenny discovering Andre Watts and exposing a world- wide audience to the young pianist’s dynamic Liszt Concerto reading. The list goes on: Bernstein resurrected Rosina Lhevinne’s artistry in a Chopin E minor piano concerto pairing with the New York Philharmonic. (One can hear it in on You Tube.) This performance tied in with Lenny’s reverence for his piano teacher at Curtis, Isabelle Vengerova whom he initially feared, but grew to adore.
In a memorable TV interview recreated on You Tube, Bernstein imparts his sagacious words, “When I teach, I learn. When I learn, I teach.” Such precious morsels delivered by Bernstein on air, fleshed out his “rabbinical need” to mentor in a panoply of activities and genres. The re-runs of these one to one media driven interactions are windows into his character, array of emotions, and creative dynamism. One also acquires insight into his struggles as a musician from fledgling to full blown icon.
My having had such vast in person, and recorded exposures to Bernstein’s diverse and expansive endeavors over decades, prompted me to question how a Bernstein biopic could capture a lion’s share of a Classically driven career that had branched out into the cosmos of Musical Theater: On the Town, West Side Story, Candide, Trouble in Tahiti, etc. and encompassed a realm of biblically based composed works such as Mass, and the Jeremiah Symphony. How were all of these received, with glowing reviews, or with what might be called less than enthusiastic responses. Did the latter affect him and in what ways?
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So following the PR, hype and symposia surrounding the release of Maestro, I finally partook of the film on my big piano room screen. (Netflix)
I loved the cinematography, lighting, wardrobe, makeup, transitions from black and white to color, snatches of Lenny’s music running through; a great fusion of choreography/music in the On the Town sailors scene; gorgeous escapes to the colorful Fairfield, Connecticut estate with Bernstein’s children romping through the grass, in foliage-filled wrappings of family togetherness. And given the memorable performance of actress Carey Mulligan, who impeccably plays Bernstein’s wife, Felicia Monteleagre, the movie was racking up a tally of positives.
Early on, we learn that Felicia had accepted Bernstein’s gay or “homosexual” proclivities as detailed in a letter to her future husband promising not to let it become an issue that would cast her in a martyrdom role.
Did steadfast followers of Bernstein’s career have an inkling of his gay liaisons well before this movie, Maestro was made? It was common knowledge among members of the New York Phil, and emanated out to the public in various tongue-in-cheek, whispering campaigns here and there. I certainly knew of it way back in time.
While Felicia’s portrayal was emotionally riveting especially at points where she had interspersed doubts about her ability to handle her husband’s sexual meanderings, I didn’t feel the same emotional identification with Bradly Cooper’s recreation of Lenny, except for the striking resemblance of his voice, and the amazing age related makeup transitions through passing decades.
Overall, I was disappointed in the film’s overemphasis on Lenny’s sexuality. It seemed to dominate from the start as an idee fixe, giving short shrift to Lenny’s creative process/expression in many genres. To this end, the movie opens with a young Lenny jumping out of bed with a male lover, springing to answer a last minute call to replace New York Philharmonic Conductor, Bruno Walter, who had become ill. It was Bernstein’s big break! (He had been an Assistant conductor)
As I tell my piano students, how you start a piece of music is so intrinsic to how it continues and develops. The germ cell of the score is embedded in the opening phrase. Likewise in Maestro we get more than an inkling of what is to follow in various iterations because of the opening scene. (in Black and White!)
Bradley Cooper who co-wrote the script, directs, and plays the lead, had decided that the opener was the springboard to what was to resonate in and out of the film. But it seemed too heavily weighted toward a gay aspect of the protagonist, in sacrifice of Bernstein’s expansive reach into a bigger cosmos of creativity.
And I wondered, where was Lenny’s publicly proactive devotion to Peace? His anti-Vietnam war stance– his fight for AIDS research. These activities embody important facets of his life, intermixed with his music related exploits. They are definitively recorded in many accessible you tube videos, and through retrieval of articles in well respected print media.
Bernstein’s interactions with the Black Panthers, obtained in a time machine New York Times search had a “radical chic” framing. (Jan. 15, 1970)
–and the blacklisting of Lenny had the involvement of J. Edgar Hoover- overlooked in Maestro; Lenny’s memorable 1959 symphonic concert in Russia, a year following a thaw in the Cold War that sprang from Van Cliburn’s win at the Tchaikovsky Competition furthered better relations between Russia and the U.S. It was an important undertaking which should have been a part of Maestro, especially given the dark period of McCarthyism that preceded in the early 50’s. Bernstein lived through it and struggled because of it. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/29/us/files-detail-years-of-spying-on-bernstein.html
Not to be redundant, but it seemed that Maestro’s central focus was Felicia’s internal responses to Lenny’s extra-marital, gay escapades–her compromises–her being in his shadow, but being gracefully resigned to her role as supportive wife and mother, earning societal approval and respectability.
As for the Mahler Symphony conducting finale that takes place in the Gothic Ely Cathedral in England, I couldn’t pretend that the conducting motions of Bradley Cooper resembled those of Leonard Bernstein, regardless of the lead actor having been intensely coached by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music Director at the Met.
To conclude, a fulfilling embodiment of Leonard Bernstein’s life appears in the Lauren Bacall narrated documentary, The Gift of Music, 1993, with its precious snippet of Lenny and Felicia singing a scene from Tosca in a comedic framing. This 1993 film is as satisfying as Jamie Bernstein’s memoir, Famous Father Girl, that was a page turner from start to finish.
New Yorker Review, Richard Brody
Norman LeBrecht’s Review
https://thecritic.co.uk/whats-missing-in-bradley-coopers-maestro/
New York Times Review
Arioso7's Blog (Shirley Kirsten) 