Maestero + Other Stuff, Documents: [Media Notes 102a]

I’ve been watching Maestro, the Leonard Bernstein biopic starring and directed by Bradley Cooper. I’m, say, 3/5 of the way through my second viewing and don’t know whether I’ll (have time to) finish. The first viewing took two, or was it three? sittings. That says more about me and the many things on my mind these days than it does about the film. Chances are that if I’d seen in a theater, especially a packed theatre, I’d have been attentive the whole way through. No problem.

Not sure what I think. Here’s the trailer:

The music you hear on the soundtrack is from Mahler’s Second Symphony. A bit over midway through the film we see the final moments of performance (glimpsed at 1:36 in the trailer, then in rehearsal 1:44, and when it’s over, & 2:19). Here’s the real performance on which the movie’s re-creation is based:

In his latest film, "Maestro," director Bradley Cooper stars as legendary conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein. The Netflix film (which opens in theaters November 22) features a recreation of Bernstein leading a historic performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in C minor, the "Resurrection Symphony." In this archival footage of the 1973 performance, recently restored, Leonard Bernstein leads the London Symphony Orchestra in the conclusion of Mahler's 2nd, with soprano Sheila Armstrong, mezzo-soprano Janet Baker, and the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, at Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire, England.

Here's a question: When Lenny – let’s call him that, the public performing persona – was conducting, was he acting or where his (rather flamboyant) gestures “authentic”? I know Cooper was acting; after all, this is a movie, and he’s the star. But I thought Cooper’s performance of Lenny’s performance was over-wrought. I’m not sure that one could validate that judgment by comparing the real with the simulated performance. It’s all in the details, which in this case are measured in microseconds.

Look, I’m a trumpet player, a semi-virtuoso trumpet player. The trumpet is physically demanding. But the player has some leeway in just how much they reveal about those demands to the audience. It’s not at all obvious to me that Bernstein had to do all that in order to give direction to the orchestra; some of it, sure, but all of it, not so sure. I can easily imagine that some of that was for the public, as part of the Lenny role. Sure it was.

He led a very public life, more so than just about any other classical musician. Conductor, pianist, composer – he composed for Broadway and film, as well as his ‘serious’ classical works ¬– and he had a very well-known series of TV programs presenting classical music to ‘young people.’ He had to evolve a persona to manage all that. What’s the relationship between that persona and what he actually did on the podium?

For that matter, what’s the relationship between that persona and his private life, which in this film centers on his relationship to his wife, Felicia Montealegre? His wife, their kids, and his male lovers. He was a homosexual – or was he bi-sexual? that’s not clear from the sources – at a time that was much less tolerant of gay men than it is now. So, a public man, a gay man, a beautiful wife. What a tangled web he had to weave – one of the topics of this interesting article by Zachary Woolfe. 

 

Here’s a 2.5 hour documentary of Bernstein rehearsing, performing, and talking about three Mahler symphonies, the Fifth, the Nineth, and Das Lied von der Erde. Bernstein loved Mahler, was partly responsible for the Mahler revival of the 1960s, and, for that matter, I too loved Mahler, still do, probably.

 

 

I say “probably” after hearing Bernstein’s remarks on those pieces of music. All that death, all that gloom and doom. Is that what I was listening to all those years? A freakin’ death wish set to music? It sounds like late Romantic Classical music trying really hard to end it all. Or maybe it's just deeply confused about the difference between a technical problem in musical construction, coming to an end, and the Meaning of Life Itself. Not sure I want to listen to Mahler after all that.

After all that I feel like taking a bath in James “I Feel Good” Brown. He’s got moves too, oh does he have moves. Could Lenny do a split? Imagine this: We’re coming up to the grand climax of Mahler’s Second and, just before the end, Lenny goes down in a split and jumps up into the cut off.

Here’s an interview with Bradley Smith, director and star of the film:

Here's a post where I comment on a most interesting interview between Duke Ellington and Leonard Bernstein in 1966. Though it takes the form of a conversation, this is very much a performance between these two, a performance and a negotiation about their respective musics.

A rehearsal conducted by Bernstein with a ravishing performance from Jose Carreras and Kiri Te Kanawa: