{"id":3186,"date":"2024-08-27T23:41:49","date_gmt":"2024-08-28T03:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3186"},"modified":"2024-08-28T13:00:26","modified_gmt":"2024-08-28T17:00:26","slug":"the-bernstein-story-not-told-in-maestro-take-three-bernstein-furtwangler-and-saying-what-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2024\/08\/the-bernstein-story-not-told-in-maestro-take-three-bernstein-furtwangler-and-saying-what-you-think.html","title":{"rendered":"The Bernstein Story Not Told in “Maestro” — Take Three: Bernstein,\u00a0Furtw\u00e4ngler, and Saying What You Think"},"content":{"rendered":"
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According to a well-worn anecdote, Johannes Brahms was heard to say: \u201cI\u2019ll never write a symphony, you have no idea what it feels like to hear the footsteps of a giant behind one\u201d \u2013 the giant being Beethoven. And Brahms was all of 43 years old when he finished his First Symphony, whose finale alludes to Beethoven\u2019s Ninth. If Brahms in fact felt intimidated by his mighty precursors, he was assuredly fortified as well: there would be no Brahms symphonies, as we know them, without the forebears he knew and studied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the case of Leonard Bernstein \u2013 the topic of a previous blog<\/a> and NPR feature<\/a> \u2013 the weight of the past was a constant topic. It imposed expectations and Olympian standards. But mainly Bernstein worried that cultural memory was a resource that risked being squandered or diminished over the course of the twentieth century. And I believe Bernstein\u2019s anxiety was all too prophetic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scripting my NPR show, I returned to Bernstein\u2019s 1973 Norton Lectures, and differently reacted to his discomfort with the course of music in his time. He was a musician whose purview was always unusually broad. Not only because it embraced a variety of genres, but because \u2013 as a diehard pedagogue \u2013 his explorations of past achievement fed never-ending questions and concerns about the fate and purpose of the arts. His discomfort with the state of music once seemed to me anachronistic. I would now call it courageous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another discovery I made, scanning the web, was a one-hour interview<\/a> with Bernstein about conductors he had known. He expressed pride that \u201call these conductors were my friends.\u201d In relation to his contemporaries, he was typically inquisitive and acquisitive. He studied \u2013 simultaneously — with Serge Koussevitzky and Fritz Reiner, who had virtually nothing in common as technicians or interpreters. He was also influenced by Dmitri Mitropoulos, who was remote from Koussevitzky and Reiner both. And, in the interview (with Paul Hume), one learns that he valued his personal relationships with Arturo Toscanini, George Szell, and Karl Bohm. Bernstein was famously eclectic \u2013 and this is nothing if not an eclectic list.<\/p>\n\n\n

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But the most riveting moment in the interview, by far, is a story about Wilhelm Furtw\u00e4ngler. (Go to 35:00.) In the late forties, Bernstein conducted a Mahler symphony at the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam. He arrived to discover that, the night before his concert, Furtw\u00e4ngler would lead Brahms\u2019 First with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. It was Bernstein\u2019s first (and only) opportunity to hear Furtw\u00e4ngler in concert \u2013 he had to go. But his European manager told him this was out of the question. The hall would be picketed by demonstrators denouncing Furtw\u00e4ngler as a Nazi (which he was not). And Bernstein, being Jewish, would attract attention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernstein managed to enter the hall via backstage and sit in a stage box unobserved. \u201cI\u2019d never seen anything like it, I\u2019d never heard anything like it,\u201d he remembers. \u201cI was in tears. I thought, \u2018I\u2019ve got to go back to meet him.\u2019 But I was told \u2013 \u2018you can\u2019t do that. It would be embarrassing for him; it would be embarrassing for you.’\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many years later, Furtw\u00e4ngler\u2019s <\/em>secretary mailed Bernstein a page from his diary. \u201cIt said: \u2018Tonight I heard the greatest conductor in the world, and I was prevented from meeting him.\u2019 Furtw\u00e4ngler <\/em>had done the same thing. He had been in that same stage box for my concert. And he asked to go backstage to meet me. We were not allowed to shake hands with one another on two successive nights because of public opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Of my older blogs, the ones dealing with Furtw\u00e4ngler continue to be accessed, the most popular being \u201cFurtwangler in Wartime”.<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the responses to my first Bernstein blog, one in particular, from a horn player, bears pondering. It reads:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Western Culture has been demonized by the Social Justice Bolsheviks as irredeemably racist and genocidal. Our contemporary St. Justs and Robespierres do not feel the need to learn about Tradition, because they have identified it as a mere catalogue of injustice and oppression.  Young people are being robbed of their own heritage; this fall at UNC Chapel Hill the music history requirement for students has been done away with, after being taught for generations. It’s time for sincere artists to speak up for the integrity of Western Culture without fear; as Heather MacDonald pointed out in her City Journal article (https:\/\/www.city-journal.org\/article\/classical-musics-suicide-pact-part-1<\/a>) the vast majority of arts leaders and educators have remained shamefully silent in the face of this decay and disintegration.  Bernstein would have boldly spoken out, cigarette lit, whiskey in hand.  Bless him and his crazy genius, and may his memory inspire American artists to “feel the fear’ and do it anyway.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Your Bernstein article, and the comments of Thomas Hampson in particular, hit me hard with a feeling that we are losing ground as human beings through the ‘calamitous failure of American cultural memory.’  I spent two years with Michael Tilson Thomas at the New World Symphony, and through him I perceived the tremendous artistic power that Bernstein wielded; a kind of uncompromising sincerity and commitment to the beauty of music. Understanding the incredible musical vitality of post World War II America is impossible without including Lenny — the idea that his legacy might be ignored through basic ignorance is horrible to contemplate.'”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I have repeatedly observed, Bernstein’s tenacious advocacy of Dmitri Shostakovich, in the midst of Cold War propaganda portraying Shostakovich as a Soviet stooge (not to mention Western cultural propaganda espousing 12-tone orthodoxy), says a lot. We do not much encounter this kind of fearlessness today. Have a look at our political arena. A conductor of my acquaintance adds:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“One sure way to stay unemployed as a conductor is to get known for your political views. “<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To read my previous blog on Bernstein and the FBI, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to a well-worn anecdote, Johannes Brahms was heard to say: \u201cI\u2019ll never write a symphony, you have no idea what it feels like to hear the footsteps of a giant behind one\u201d \u2013 the giant being Beethoven. And Brahms was all of 43 years old when he finished his First Symphony, whose finale alludes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-Po","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3186"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3215,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3186\/revisions\/3215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}