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Private World
paperback book
464 pages, Paperback
First published October 30, 1968
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 27, 2012
Clearing out my mom's library, the odds and ends she didn't take to her new apartment... Some interesting odd things. This picturebook was assembled in the summer of 1968, which Gruen spent with the Bernsteins in Italy. It was intended to be a photo-essay book similar to the Private Life of Picasso, except that, as Bernstein says right in the beginning, "Picasso's private world made a perfectly wonderful book because Picasso lives absolutely openly. He lives in a bikini in the south of France; his morality is absolutely free. I myself have a much more bourgeois background. After all, I'm the son of a rather puritanical, Mosaic-oriented Talmudic scholar. And as free as I have been, especially in my youthful years, I have never been able to escape from that strong Puritan morality which comes to me both by way of the Talmudic father and the new England I grew up in, which make a very puritanical combination indeed.
"Although you may spend your youth fighting your environmental morality, protesting it, and showing what a rebel you are, it stays with you--even through some abortive attempts at psychoanalysis. I still have this bourgeois streak and I will always have it. It's a streak which is reinforced by my need to protect people I love. So there's a limit to how much I can reveal myself."
Now, I believe I have heard that Bernstein was gay or at least bi--and these are all beautiful pictures of a beautiful man treated as a demigod by his wife and children--which brings out such a resonance in those words. What a complex life. What compromises, what grace, what drive. For once, this IS a private life, a private/public life... He will turn 49 that summer. The look he gives us from the cover and the two-page spread, just handsome tanned face and that shock of gray hair, face and shoulders, and the clear eyes that have a touch of humor and a touch of sadness, very much a man who lives with his secrets. Looking forward to this.
******************************************
surprised how much I'm enjoying reading what is basically a coffee-table book... a look into the private life and personal thoughts of a giant. Makes me want to track down and listen to the works he discusses... An intellectual (went to Harvard before he attended music school--the other students at Curtis hated him because not only was he a bona-fide musical genius and the professors could see no one but him while he was there, also knew about the underlying texts which many of the works had been based on, knew about literature and philosophy and just about everything.) It's the thing that really makes this book--how active Bernstein was mentally, how intellectual he was, THINKING, feeling, analyzing all the time,he was always sparking. It's a type of culture and exploration which reminded me very much of the Alfred North Whitehead conversations. Though Bernstein was a heck of a lot sexier than ANW.
There's a real Mozart-Salieri story that slayed me, about the conductor at the NY Philharmonic the season when the 25 year old Bernstein, the orchestra's assistant conductor (there in case someone got sick), had to step in for Bruno Walter on a half-day's notice, for a broadcast performance, and brought down the house. The regular conductor, Rodzinski, hated him from that moment on. It was R's first year at the Phil, and he was overshadowed by this upstart--never did get over it. He was being asked to guest conduct all over the place. His own compositions were getting a lot of attention, Fancy Free, the Jeremiah, and Rodzinski actually tried to strangle him once. Sort of the end of things at the Phil for a while.
Now want to listen to so many works the book discusses. Like the Shostakovich 5th and 7th--"The last noble strains we heard." (as opposed to contemporary coolness and despair.) B and the author talking about a huge painting by Larry Rivers: "Let's say it's one of the more monumental things that have been created in the last two years in our country. But what does it amount to? One admires it, one is amused by it, certainly, because it has all the surprises in it. But then what? Is one moved by it? Is one ennobled, enriched by it?" That's the question, Lenny my boy.
But so many concerts, so many works--the Italian Symphony by Mendelssohn, Aaron Copland's "El Salon Mexico" (Copland his great father figure--his own father was a rabbi and Talmudic scholar and hadn't wanted him to go into music.) "The Memoirs of Hadrian" by Marguerite Yourcenar. Pergolesi's Sabat Mater. Mahler's 9th or the 5th, Wozzeck, the Lyric Suite, as conducted by LB's conducting mentor Dmitri Mitropoulos. Schumann's Manfred, and Wagner's Meistersinger, Roza's Theme and Variations--the pieces he played at that momentous debut. I'd love to listen to his Young People's Concerts, where he explained the work as he conducted it.
He was just in that generation which had a cultural familiarity with the canon and his own ideas about it which I've got to say, I so envy. I love this book. He can toss off a comment about Robert Lowell, just in passing. It's amazing to see someone really firing on all cylinders. Very inspiring.
And such wonderful anecdotes--about wearing Koussevitzky's cufflinks, and getting married in the maestro's white suit because K's widow insisted. The elegant Chilean wife Felicia. Chaplin pops in for some impromptu musicales. LB's insomnia. His relentless energy. His sudden funks. His genuine love of fatherhood.
"Although you may spend your youth fighting your environmental morality, protesting it, and showing what a rebel you are, it stays with you--even through some abortive attempts at psychoanalysis. I still have this bourgeois streak and I will always have it. It's a streak which is reinforced by my need to protect people I love. So there's a limit to how much I can reveal myself."
Now, I believe I have heard that Bernstein was gay or at least bi--and these are all beautiful pictures of a beautiful man treated as a demigod by his wife and children--which brings out such a resonance in those words. What a complex life. What compromises, what grace, what drive. For once, this IS a private life, a private/public life... He will turn 49 that summer. The look he gives us from the cover and the two-page spread, just handsome tanned face and that shock of gray hair, face and shoulders, and the clear eyes that have a touch of humor and a touch of sadness, very much a man who lives with his secrets. Looking forward to this.
******************************************
surprised how much I'm enjoying reading what is basically a coffee-table book... a look into the private life and personal thoughts of a giant. Makes me want to track down and listen to the works he discusses... An intellectual (went to Harvard before he attended music school--the other students at Curtis hated him because not only was he a bona-fide musical genius and the professors could see no one but him while he was there, also knew about the underlying texts which many of the works had been based on, knew about literature and philosophy and just about everything.) It's the thing that really makes this book--how active Bernstein was mentally, how intellectual he was, THINKING, feeling, analyzing all the time,he was always sparking. It's a type of culture and exploration which reminded me very much of the Alfred North Whitehead conversations. Though Bernstein was a heck of a lot sexier than ANW.
There's a real Mozart-Salieri story that slayed me, about the conductor at the NY Philharmonic the season when the 25 year old Bernstein, the orchestra's assistant conductor (there in case someone got sick), had to step in for Bruno Walter on a half-day's notice, for a broadcast performance, and brought down the house. The regular conductor, Rodzinski, hated him from that moment on. It was R's first year at the Phil, and he was overshadowed by this upstart--never did get over it. He was being asked to guest conduct all over the place. His own compositions were getting a lot of attention, Fancy Free, the Jeremiah, and Rodzinski actually tried to strangle him once. Sort of the end of things at the Phil for a while.
Now want to listen to so many works the book discusses. Like the Shostakovich 5th and 7th--"The last noble strains we heard." (as opposed to contemporary coolness and despair.) B and the author talking about a huge painting by Larry Rivers: "Let's say it's one of the more monumental things that have been created in the last two years in our country. But what does it amount to? One admires it, one is amused by it, certainly, because it has all the surprises in it. But then what? Is one moved by it? Is one ennobled, enriched by it?" That's the question, Lenny my boy.
But so many concerts, so many works--the Italian Symphony by Mendelssohn, Aaron Copland's "El Salon Mexico" (Copland his great father figure--his own father was a rabbi and Talmudic scholar and hadn't wanted him to go into music.) "The Memoirs of Hadrian" by Marguerite Yourcenar. Pergolesi's Sabat Mater. Mahler's 9th or the 5th, Wozzeck, the Lyric Suite, as conducted by LB's conducting mentor Dmitri Mitropoulos. Schumann's Manfred, and Wagner's Meistersinger, Roza's Theme and Variations--the pieces he played at that momentous debut. I'd love to listen to his Young People's Concerts, where he explained the work as he conducted it.
He was just in that generation which had a cultural familiarity with the canon and his own ideas about it which I've got to say, I so envy. I love this book. He can toss off a comment about Robert Lowell, just in passing. It's amazing to see someone really firing on all cylinders. Very inspiring.
And such wonderful anecdotes--about wearing Koussevitzky's cufflinks, and getting married in the maestro's white suit because K's widow insisted. The elegant Chilean wife Felicia. Chaplin pops in for some impromptu musicales. LB's insomnia. His relentless energy. His sudden funks. His genuine love of fatherhood.
August 10, 2009
I've owned this coffee-table book for a long time, but was recently inspired to read it after hearing Berstein's son Alex on NPR's Car Talk! He referred to their summer in Italy in 1967 and that's the subject of this picture-essay. The text gives an intimate picture of Lenny as gifted musician and family man. The photography is worthy of an exhibit on its own. I recently read that Lenny's composing studio has been presented to Indiana University's School of Music by his children...wow!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews