An Intimate Portrait of Leonard Bernstein
Narrator: Lauren Bacall
Director: Horant H. Hohlfeld
Studio: Unitel Classica/DGG 00440 073 4336
Video: 4:3 full screen, color & B&W
Audio: English PCM Stereo, German option
Subtitles: English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese
No region code
Length: 85 minutes
Rating: *****
This is a magnificent, passionate biography which one critic observed Lenny would have loved. It covers most aspects of his unique career using archival footage, stills and and interviews with a number of people. But the star talking head here is the irrepressible Lenny himself, telling about his parents’ objections to his wanting to make a career as a musician, and his first meetings with Mitropoulos, Koussevitsky, Copland and others. One of the clips comes from his visit with Edward R. Murrow on Person To Person.
The musical excerpts are well-chosen to illustrate Bernstein’s wild conducting choreography, in which control of his body seems to be completely taken over by the music being performed. Mahler excerpts are the main evidence here. There are later clips of his work with young people as a music educator and mentor to young conductors. Clips from some of his speeches, such as a series at Harvard, show his wide-ranging and humanitarian intellect, and excerpts from his Young People’s Concerts with the NY Philharmonic and his Omnibus TV series will bring back memories of one of the greatest communicators about music we have ever had. Made me want to get out all my Bernstein Mahler Symphonies again – both the Columbia and DGGs – and audition them again.
– John Sunier
