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Showing posts with label Leonard Bernstein. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Leonard Bernstein. Show all posts
Bradley Cooper and British actress, Carey Mulligan, star in the new Netflix biopic about the legendary American conductor and composer, Leonard Bernstein.
Directed by and starring Bradley Cooper as the maestro himself, the film is set to hit Netflix in 2023. Alongside Cooper is Carey Mulligan who plays the conductor’s wife, stage and TV actor Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein.
Fans of the streaming service have had an exclusive first look at Cooper and Mulligan in their biopic roles with images released on Netflix’s social media pages yesterday afternoon.
Here are the first stills of Cooper and Mulligan from the upcoming Netflix production portraying the ‘American classical music wonder boy’ and his star actress wife....
Carey Mulligan as Felicia Cohn Montealegre and Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein. Picture: Netflix
Born on 28 August 1918, Leonard Bernstein married Chilean-American TV and stage actor, Felicia Cohn Montealegre, in 1951.
Though a somewhat unsettled marriage due to Bernstein’s well-documented homosexuality, there was a strong love between the two artists, making their connection much more than a relationship of convenience, despite their individual sexual preferences.
The couple had three children together; Jamie, Alexander and Nina.
Carey Mulligan as Felicia Cohn Montealegre and Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein. Picture: Netflix
In an interview with Classic FM, Jamie Bernstein was quick to correct the description of the new netflix film saying, “It’s not a biopic, strictly speaking, it doesn’t tell the story of Leonard Bernstein from birth to death – it’s not that kind of a film at all.
“In fact, it’s a portrait of our parents’ marriage. It’s about something very specific and very personal for [my siblings and I].
“We’re really struck by the fact that this was the aspect of the story that Bradley decided to focus in on and we’re very excited about Carey Mulligan as our mother Felicia; I promise you she is going to send it to the moon in a rocket.”
Carey Mulligan as Felicia Cohn Montealegre and Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein. Picture: Netflix
Montealegre was aware of Bernstein’s sexuality, and in a letter shortly after their marriage in 1951 she wrote, “If I seemed sad as you drove away today it was not because I felt in any way deserted but because I was left alone to face myself and this whole bloody mess which is our ‘connubial’ life.
“I’ve done a lot of thinking and have decided that it’s not such a mess after all. First: we are not committed to a life sentence – nothing is really irrevocable, not even marriage (though I used to think so). Second: you are a homosexual and may never change – you don’t admit to the possibility of a double life, but if your peace of mind, your health, your whole nervous system depends on a certain sexual pattern what can you do? Third: I am willing to accept you as you are, without being a martyr or sacrificing myself on the L.B. altar. (I happen to love you very much—this may be a disease and if it is what better cure?) Let’s try and see what happens if you are free to do as you like, but without guilt and confession, please!
“The feelings you have for me will be clearer and easier to express—our marriage is not based on passion but on tenderness and mutual respect.”
Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein. Picture: Netflix
The film follows Bernstein across multiple decades, and fans are already excited to see Cooper’s visual similarity in the photographs of the actor’s portrayal of the conductor at an older age.
“If this is Bradley Cooper, the makeup artist should get an Oscar,” one Facebook commenter noted.
Another said, “It’s more than the makeup, it’s the posture, the gesture, the way he holds his cigarette.”
Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein. Picture: Netflix
We’re just as excited as the Facebook comments section to see what Cooper will bring to this role of the beloved American artist.
With a due date yet to be announced, but the film expected next year, we’re sure that something’s coming... something good.
Classic FM met with Jamie Bernstein to discuss her father, the new West Side Story remake, and her familial-like relationship with the late Stephen Sondheim...
Jamie Bernstein is an author, writer, narrator, and the eldest child of the American composer-conductor, Leonard Bernstein.
Her memoir Famous Father Girl, published in 2018, shared an intimate, undisguised portrait of her father as the musical genius, but also complex human being that he was.
Now with her father’s musical, West Side Story brought to the big screen for the second time in multi award-winning fashion, we sat down with Jamie to discuss the musical that she and her younger brother and sister, Alexander and Nina, refer to as the “fourth sibling”.
West Side Story (2021). Picture: Alamy
West Side Story
“I couldn’t wait to see the new film!” Jamie told Classic FM. “My brother and sister and I finally got to go to a private, very COVID-conscious screening last April, and we just were crazy for it.
“What was really fantastic for us was that musically, it was the best possible outcome. It was just stellar all the way through and filled with superstar performers.”
The high-profile music team working on the 2021 remake was made up of the talents of both the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. They were directed by Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, and the Academy Award-nominated composer David Newman, was the orchestrator and arranger.
“How I wish my dad was around to see this film, to hear this film and hear how his music sounds in it,” Jamie revealed.
“I also so wish that my father and Steven Spielberg could have met each other because they have a lot in common. They’re both incredibly warm-hearted people. They love to reach out and communicate and make connections and they’re really peas in a pod.
“I’m sorry they didn’t get to meet in real life, but they sort of did meet through the film.”
Steven Spielberg directs West Side Story (2021). Picture: Alamy
Jamie also told Classic FM about her familial-like relationship with the late composer Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the lyrics to West Side Story.
“Steve was always there, just like West Side Story was, and for the exact same reason – because he was there working with my father. But he wasn’t just a work colleague, he was really a friend of the whole family.
“He would come and visit us in the summers, come out to our country house in Connecticut for the weekend. He really hung out with us. For my siblings and I, he was like another uncle.
“We were always a little careful around Steve because you wouldn’t want to rile him; he was a scary dude when we were young! But, interestingly enough in the last 20 years of his life, he kind of mellowed out and became genuinely avuncular and was very affectionate with the three of us. He often invited us over to his house to have dinner or play anagrams and word games, which we all love so much. We got to really hang out with him in this very relaxed and affectionate way quite a lot in the last years of his life.”
Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim at the opening night of West Side Story on Broadway in 1957. Picture: Getty
Sondheim was also at the pre-screening of West Side Story in April. “He actually had his own private screen with nobody else there because they were so keen to keep him safe from COVID, since he was 90,” Jamie adds.
At the end of the screening, Sondheim told Steven Spielberg how much he adored the film. He thought it was sensational. He was over the moon and he said to Spielberg, “I can't wait to see it at the public premiere when there's a full audience”.
But Sondheim died three days before that New York premiere, so he missed it.
“It was heartbreaking, we missed him so badly,” Jamie says sadly. “It was very bittersweet that night.”
Jamie Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim far left. Picture: Getty
One of Sondheim’s most emotive examples of his lyric-writing is in the song ‘Somewhere’ from West Side Story.
In the Broadway musical, it’s part of a dream-like sequence. In the 1961 film, it’s a duet sung between Tony and Maria as they long for a place where they can be together. However, in the 2021 remake, the song is sung solo by the character Valentina (played by Rita Moreno) on a generational level, as the older character mourns the missed opportunities for the young people in the film.
“‘Somewhere’ has taken on a personality in the world all unto itself,” Jamie tells Classic FM, “because it’s become such an anthem and expresses all our collective longing for a world where we take care of each other and are kind to each other. A world where love rises above hatred, which is what West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet are about.
“It’s not only in Sondheim’s lyrics, but it’s in my father’s music too.
“Musically, the great thing about West Side Story is that it doesn’t need to go in a box,” Jamie concludes.
“The whole fun of West Side Story is that it has elements of musical theatre, elements of opera, bebop jazz, Latin Caribbean; all of these genres are mixed together into a work of art that really redefined the context in which it was originally presented on Broadway.
“It just exploded the boundaries in such a wonderful way that really nobody could go back after that.”
The Bernstein family: Felicia, Leonard, Alexander, and Jamie (seen pointing at the music). Picture: Getty
Family and the new Bradley Cooper film
It is clear from the way Jamie speaks about music that she is incredibly passionate about the art form, but also gifted with an innate understanding of musical theory, thanks to her upbringing.
“As children, my brother, sister and I all took piano lessons”, Jamie told Classic FM, “but we didn’t really like our piano lessons. We never practised except in that sickening half hour before the piano teacher came to the house on Tuesday afternoons, when we tried to remember what we were supposed to have practised last week.
“My brother used to get stomach aches right before his piano lesson. And he says that to this very day, around 4pm on a Tuesday afternoon, he still gets a similar feeling,” Jamie laughs.
“Aside from the piano, the three of us are very musical. We’re always talking about music and singing along to whatever comes up on the radio – we feel music really viscerally.
“But because of this bright light that we lived under, we couldn’t even imagine doing it ourselves. Well, I did try, but I never could shut off the voice in my head that would say ‘Who do you think you are and what do you think you’re doing?’.”
Jamie and Leonard Bernstein in 1980. Picture: Getty
The ‘bright light’ of her father will be illuminating the big screen once again, but this time in the form of an upcoming film about the composer, and his family, starring Bradley Cooper.
“We’re in regular communication with Bradley Cooper, because he’s very interested in achieving a kind of authenticity about [Leonard Bernstein].
“He’s starring in the film, co writing the screenplay and he's directing. He’s doing everything. He’s a total immersion guy, and he’s just maniacally immersed in all things Leonard Bernstein, so he’s asking us lots of questions all the time and has been very generous with his whole process.
“It’s incredibly strange and disconcerting, to have this young movie star portraying our dad at several ages. Bradley portrays my dad when he was in his 20s, 40s, 50s, and then in his final years, too, so he’s going to be going through many transformations.
“It’s not a biopic, strictly speaking, it doesn’t tell the story of Leonard Bernstein from birth to death – it’s not that kind of a film at all. In fact, it’s a portrait of our parents’ marriage. It’s about something very specific and very personal for us. We’re really struck by the fact that this was the aspect of the story that Bradley decided to focus in on and we’re very excited about Carey Mulligan as our mother Felicia; I promise you she is going to send it to the moon in a rocket.
“It’s going to be amazing.”
Bernstein and his wife Costa Rican-American actress Felicia Montealegre. Picture: Getty
Jamie is due to speak at the Jewish Music Institute on 10 March 2022 about her father, alongside speakers representing other Jewish musical figures including, Yehudi Menuhin.
“It’s important we never miss the opportunity to celebrate them,” Jamie says ahead of her appearance at the fundraising gala.
“My father’s parents were both from Ukraine, so these last few weeks, I've had some very intense feelings about where we all came from.
“Back at the turn of the 20th century, which is when my grandparents finally had to emigrate, because there were pogroms and terrible anti semitism. At that time, the country was not a very welcoming environment for Ukrainians who were Jewish.
“There are so many Jewish musicians in the world whose ancestors came from Ukraine. That whole area produced incredible prodigies and geniuses who were able to get out into the world and share their art with the rest of us.
“Today my heart swells with hope that everyone in Ukraine will be okay. There’s a great line from my dad, about what music does in times like these.
“After President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, my father conducted a performance of Mahler's Second Symphony, the resurrection, which was broadcast nationally as a gesture of comfort to everyone.
“A couple days later he was speaking about the circumstances and my dad said: ‘This will be our reply to violence. To make music more intensely, more beautifully, and more devotedly, than ever before.’”
Iconic preserved moments of history’s most esteemed maestros, doing very normal stuff.
Photography is vital to our world. It gives us a deep connection to the past, preserving memories and moments of historic importance, and telling truths if ever sinister attempts are made to mask reality.
And as photography became increasingly widespread during the 19th century, classical composers began to enjoy their own moments under the flash-and-powder.
Now, from Gustav Mahler to Leonard Bernstein, we often hail these musicians’ art as so influential, so unrivalled, that we can forget they are just human beings like all the rest of us. Human beings, with really mundane hobbies outside of the recording studio.
Seeing is believing, as these great maestros show an interest in falconry, sledging and, well, swinging. Of the playground sort, mind you…
Claude Debussy having a nap (1900)
Claude Debussy having a nap. Picture: adoc-photos/Corbis via Getty Images
Dmitri Shostakovich watching his favourite football team on a Sunday morning in Moscow (1942)
Dmitri Shostakovich watching his favourite Spartak football team on a Sunday morning in Moscow. Picture: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images
Dame Ethel Smyth waiting impatiently for women to have equal rights (1930)
Composer and political activist Dame Ethel Smyth waiting impatiently for women to have equal rights. (1930). Picture: History collection 2016 / Alamy Stock Photo
Young Sergei Prokofiev playing an intense game of chess (date unknown)
Young Sergei Prokofiev playing a highly competitive game of chess. Picture: Alamy
Richard Strauss in Schierke, Germany, sledging with noticeable discomfort (date unknown)
Richard Strauss sledging in Schierke, Germany. Picture: Roger Viollet via Getty Images
John Williams dropping by to visit Luciano Pavarotti in his dressing room at the Grammy Awards (1999)
John Williams and Luciano Pavarotti clasping hands at the Grammy Awards. (1999). Picture: Ron Wolfson/Online/Getty
Leonard Bernstein swinging barefoot outside his Fairfield, Connecticut home (1986)
Composer Leonard Bernstein swings outside of his Fairfield, Connecticut home (1986). Picture: Joe McNally/Getty Images
German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen smoking a pipe during a recording session (1970)
German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen smokes a pipe during a recording session. Picture: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan enjoying a spot of falconry (1955)
Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan enjoying a spot of falconry. (1955). Picture: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
French composer and conductor Nadia Boulanger, exasperated during rehearsals (1976)
French composer and conductor Nadia Boulanger, exasperated. (1976). Picture: Erich Auerbach/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Opera legend Jessye Norman and film maestro John Williams share a moment (2012)
Opera legend Jessye Norman and film maestro John Williams share a moment at Williams’ 80th Birthday Tribute (2012). Picture: Paul Marotta/Getty Images
Gustav Mahler enjoying some family time with wife Alma, and daughters Anna and Maria (1910)
Gustav Mahler enjoying some family time with his wife Alma and daughters Anna and Maria. (1910). Picture: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy
Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi with his beloved dogs (1800s)
Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi with his dogs. (1800s). Picture: Alamy
Composer Benjamin Britten and English tenor Peter Pears having a rather sombre picnic (1954)
Artist and set designer John Piper, composer Benjamin Britten and English tenor Peter Pears having a break while in Venice for the premiere of Britten's opera 'The Turn Of The Screw'. (1954?). Picture: Erich Auerbach/Getty Images
Gustav and Alma Mahler taking a stroll nearby their summer residence in Toblach (1909)
Austrian composer Gustav Mahler and his wife Alma take a stroll nearby their summer residence in Toblach. (1909). Picture: Imagno/Getty Images
Composer Sally Beamish at her home in Scotland, on a hammock, with a dog (2014)
Sally Beamish on a hammock, with a dog. Picture: Alamy
Soviet composers Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich and Aram Khachaturian, just hanging out (date unknown)
Soviet composers Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich and Aram Khachaturian just hanging out.. Picture: Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Composer John Philip Sousa among his four-legged “musical friends” (1922)
US composer John Philip Sousa among his four-legged "musical friends". Picture: George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images
Leonard Bernstein at lunch with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1946)
Leonard Bernstein at lunch with fellow composer Aaron Copland at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Massachusetts. (1946). Picture: Erika Stone/Getty Images
Pioneering composer Amy Beach posing for a photo with four American female songwriters (1924)
Pioneering composer Amy Beach with four American female song writers in April, 1924. Picture: Lebrecht Music & Arts / Alamy Stock Photo
Claude Debussy, flying a kite with Louis Laloy
Claude Debussy flying a kite with Louis Laloy. Picture: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Leonard Bernstein, sitting atop a tree in Israel (date unknown)
Leonard Bernstein, up a tree in Israel. Picture: Wiki
George Gershwin photographed while painting a portrait of Arnold Schoenberg (1936)
George Gershwin photographed while painting a portrait of Austrian composer Arnold Schonberg. Picture: ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images
Cello prodigy Yo-Yo Ma plays for President J.F. Kennedy. Picture: The Kennedy Center/YouTube
By Maddy Shaw Roberts, ClassicFM London
In 1962, Yo-Yo Ma played for President J.F. Kennedy, and the world heard his playing for the first time.
Here’s the moment a late great of the music world introduced a young star onto the stage, with little idea of the beloved, cultural figurehead he would become.
In a video published by The Kennedy Center, American conductor and TV host for the evening, Leonard Bernstein introduces seven-year-old cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his 11-year-old sister Yeou-Cheng Ma, to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower during An American Pageant of the Arts in November 1962.
The purpose of the telecast was to raise funds for the National Cultural Center, which was founded under Eisenhower’s administration and nurtured under Kennedy’s.
A smattering of applause is heard as the young sibling duo walk to centre stage, bow and take their seats.
Remarkably playing the entire thing from memory, Ma performs the first movement of French composer Jean-Baptiste Bréval’s Concertino No. 3 in A Major, in a piano-cello duet with his sister. Even as a child, Ma’s performances were imbued with a sense of peace and togetherness (watch below).
Introducing Ma, Bernstein celebrates the “double stream of art… flowing into and out of America”.
The great Mahler champion and West Side Story composer uses his speech to highlight “the attraction of our country to foreign artists, and scientists and thinkers, who have come not only to visit us, but often to join us as Americans, to become citizens of what to some has historically been the land of opportunity and to others the land of freedom.
“And in this great tradition, there has come to us, this year, a young man aged seven, bearing the name Yo-Yo Ma,” Bernstein continues.
Born in Paris, Ma was bathed in music from a young age – his mother, Marina Lu, a singer, and his father, Hiao-Tsiun Ma, a violinist and professor of music at Nanjing National Central University.
Ma took up the violin, piano and viola from very young, but settled on cello aged four. From the age of five, he was already performing before audiences in France.
Two years later, Ma and his family moved to the United States. And this, it appears, was the first time Ma was seen on television after cellist Pablo Casals – who was also on the bill that night – brought the young star to the organisers’ attention.
Leonard Bernstein introduces seven-year-old Yo-Yo Ma. Picture: The Kennedy Center/YouTube
“Now, here’s a cultural image for you to ponder as you listen,” Bernstein continues. “A seven-year-old Chinese cellist, playing old French music, for his new American compatriots.
“Welcome Yo-Yo Ma, and Yeou-Cheng Ma.”
And so, a cultural icon was born. With 18 Grammy Awards under his belt, Ma is arguably the world’s most celebrated classical cellist and has recorded music from American bluegrass to traditional Chinese melodies. A United Nations Messenger of Peace, Ma has also become a humanitarian icon and champion for the power of music in healing.
Yo-Yo’s sister, now Dr. Yeou-Cheng Ma, has often collaborated with her brother and had great success on the world stage as a child, playing with the Denver Symphony Orchestra at age 10. Now, she enriches young musical talent as the executive director of the Children’s Orchestra Society in New York.
Exactly a year after Ma and his sister’s performance, and two months after President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, new legislation was signed into law renaming the National Cultural Center as a “living memorial” to John F. Kennedy.
Now, let’s all take a moment to remember the time Ma wrote to Bernstein, aged 10, asking if he would like to hear him play again:
How could the answer have been anything but “yes”...
