It wasn't so long ago that Leonard Bernstein was almost as popular as a rock star. The composer/pianist/conductor was not only successful in those three creative fields, he was also a famous and dashing figure on television, lecturing on classical music to a mass audience. That was in the days when the networks felt they had a responsibility to provide the public with not just low but high art. The notion seems quaint, even faintly ridiculous, today.
Hershey Felder, the musician/actor, has built a cottage industry for himself by doing solo shows on such musical personages as George Gershwin, Frederic Chopin and Ludwig Beethoven. All three of Felder's shows premiered at the Geffen Playhouse and went on to national and international success. Teamed up with Felder each time was director Joel Zwick (best known for "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," the highest-grossing romantic comedy of all time).
Felder and Zwick have reunited with Maestro: The Art of Leonard Bernstein. The action takes place on Sunday, October 14, 1990, "in Leonard Bernstein's last moments." From that jumping-off point, Maestro, in formulaic fashion, ranges back to Bernstein's origins: growing up in Boston as the child of Jewish immigrant parents (who naturally wanted him to become a doctor), fighting to go his own way in the world, winning praise and prizes because of his astounding musical gifts. Major figures such as Dimitri Mitropolous and Serge Koussevitsky took the prodigy under their wings (and sometimes into their beds), and it wasn't long (1943, to be exact) before Bernstein made his conducting debut at New York's Town Hall.
From there, he kept conducting, performing, teaching and composing--not only symphonies, chamber music and choral works but Broadway show scores, the best known of which is, of course, West Side Story. In short, he had the most varied and remarkable career of any American musician-- yet felt dissatisfied and disappointed, if only because he hadn't written a canonic work on the order of Beethoven's Fifth or Brahms' 9th.
This, at any rate, is the way Felder portrays Bernstein--as a man who was perpetually self-critical and unhappy. Who Am I? is a question he could never quite answer.
He was also in doubt or guilt about his sexuality, having wrecked his marriage by indulging in homosexual affairs.
Felder doesn't dwell on the dark side of Bernstein's character; the emphasis in Maestro is on Bernstein's music and songs. Felder also channels the passionate way Bernstein talked about music--and throws in a few Borscht-Belt jokes for good measure. This is the Reader's Digest version of Bernstein's life, but Felder is such a skilled and polished actor that I can truthfully say I enjoyed his performance from beginning to end.
