‘Maestro’
There has been a lot of chatter and hype about the new film by Bradley Cooper about Leonard Bernstein, ‘Maestro’. I finally got round to watching it on Netflix on Christmas Eve, and I really enjoyed it.
Bernstein (1918-1990) was a Renaissance man - composer, pianist, conductor, educationalist and controversialist. In his lifetime, he aroused fierce loyalties and strong hatreds, and in the 33 years since his death, much has been written and said about him – his legacy both as composer and conductor, his complicated private life (he was bisexual, but predominantly homosexual), his desire to be taken seriously as a composer, although he was most famous for composing ‘West Side Story,’ his acknowledgement later in life of his Jewish nature, something he had not emphasised earlier in his career, and simply his position as an American cultural icon.
I first became aware of Leonard Bernstein at the Edinburgh Festival of 1973, when, still a schoolboy recently introduced to Mahler, Bruckner and Wagner and madly in love with late Romanticism, I decided to take my father to a concert in the Usher Hall. At this time, he knew nothing of classical music, other than the 1812 Overture and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and I thought the music for the concert was by Franz Lehar, a master of the Viennese waltz. I reckoned this would be an easy introduction for my dad to the music of the late 19th century, and so persuaded him to buy a couple of tickets for the concert. The conductor was Leonard Bernstein and the orchestra was the London Symphony, and we turned up at the Usher Hall for what I thought was Lehar’s 2nd Symphony, of which I knew nothing apart from the composer’s name. It turned out that I had got that wrong as well, since the programme was actually Gustav Mahler’s 2nd Symphony, ‘The Resurrection’, and so we saw and heard that night one of the greatest concerts of my life, a concert which changed my life, as I realised that I wanted to be part of this music-making world and would do anything to become a musician. I can report that my father, thankfully, was mightily impressed too and thus began his own education in classical music. The concert was repeated a few months later in Ely Cathedral and recorded for posterity, and that concert was also the centrepiece for the film, ‘Maestro,’ for which Bradley Cooper apparently studied conducting in the Bernstein style for several months before filming.
Cooper directed the film and also played Bernstein in it, a performance of herculean stature and astonishing bravura, even being fitted with a prosthetic nose for the role, an assumption which has caused a lot of controversy. Bernstein’s Jewishness was vitally important to him, and Cooper obviously felt that a large Semitic nose would help his character. I’m not entirely convinced, as I think he could have done the role without it at no great loss to the film, and I’m not sure if the nose controversy was worth the negative publicity. However, Bernstein’s family apparently was fine with the decision, and so, in the end, am I.
The film begins with Bernstein’s big break, the chance to conduct in Carnegie Hall when Bruno Walter fell ill in November 1943. The young conductor stepped in to conduct the New York Philharmonic Orchestra with no rehearsal, and had a triumph. The concert was broadcast throughout the United States and so was not an isolated success but was heard everywhere. His rather louche lifestyle was established from the start, as we see him receive the phone call telling him he is to rush to the concert hall, in a Bohemian apartment in New York full of young men, including the composer Aaron Copland.
The next scene sees him meet his future wife, Felicia Montealegre, a young actress born in Costa Rica and educated in Chile. Her mother was Costa Rican and her father’s father was Jewish, although she was brought up as a Catholic. The two met in 1946 at a fairly wild party in the home of the Chilean pianist, Claudio Arrau, who taught Felicia piano, and after a few years, they got married in 1951, producing three children. So far, so conventional.
However, the crux of the film is the volatile relationship between the two, as Leonard pursues a clandestine life of gay relationships, while Felicia tries to keep up appearances, and shield their children from gossip, rumour and innuendo.
A lot of the criticism of the film has been the focus on the marital relationship, at the expense of a proper concentration on Bernstein’s career as both composer and conductor. However, I think that any downgrading of the relationship to concentrate on the music would turn the film into a niche musical documentary, interesting to a small core audience but dull and boring to the public at large. It is a Netflix production after all, with Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg on the production team, and the sex aspect pulls in the punters. There is for me a little too much of this, but at least it is tastefully done and not in any way explicit. I would have liked more about the works, especially ‘West Side Story’ but there was a reasonable coverage of the Mass, the Chichester Psalms and Candide, although from a Scottish point of view, it would have been interesting to explore Bernstein’s delight at the Scottish Opera production of ‘Candide’ in 1988, directed by Jonathan Miller and now seen as the definitive production of that piece.
The tour de force of the Mahler 2 in Ely Cathedral was well done, and Cooper’s performance as Bernstein was remarkable, coached by the New York Met’s musical director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin. After the travesty of Cate Blanchett’s ghastly ‘Tar’ and the embarrassment of’ Quartet’, the most recent filmic attempts to portray classical music, I found ‘Maestro’ a refreshing novelty, a film about a world I have worked in for over 40 years and which I recognised clearly.
The performances of both Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan as Mr and Mrs Bernstein were frankly stunning, the ageing process well-handled and quite subtle, and their relationship beautifully caught on screen. I found the supporting cast uniformly excellent, with both the children and Bernstein’s family sympathetically portrayed.
I would highly recommend this film to our readers, either on Netflix or in the cinema, but I would also recommend you to look up the BBC i-player, which has several authentic documentaries about, and featuring, the real Leonard Bernstein. In addition, if you can find the original films of Bernstein conducting the Mahler symphonies, in particular the Second from Ely Cathedral, produced by the Bernstein expert and his close friend, Humphrey Burton, you are in for a treat. Bradley Cooper does a fine job of imitating Bernstein the conductor, but the real thing is pure unadulterated genius. People wrongly dismissed Bernstein as a showman, but his total commitment, especially to Mahler, is breathtaking. It’s interesting to watch his film documentary about Mahler, des Knaben Wunderhorn and Jewishness, as you can see how closely he parallels much of Mahler’s life, particularly the dichotomy between conducting and composing, and his attitude to his Jewishness.
Finally, if anything can persuade people to give up smoking, this film should do it. Both Leonard and Felicia smoked non-stop, clearly documented in the film, and the fact that both died early from smoking related illnesses is not unrelated!
