Bernstein’s Wall: Leonard Bernstein Uptown

An elite group gathered this week for a special screening of BERNSTEIN’S WALL, a documentary about the great composer/ conductor/ educator, a fixture of 20^th century American cultural history. Well-timed, the riveting documentary comes after Bradley Cooper’s success with MAESTRO, his Oscar nominated biopic of the legendary artist. But here, with Leonard Bernstein’s own words dancing across the screen, we get the inner life of this creative genius.

This week’s screening and dinner at Jean-Georges’ new Four Twenty-Five restaurant hit every high note, hosted by Spectrum One’s Frank DiLella—not far from the Philharmonic where Bernstein’s illustrious career was launched at 25, when, as an understudy conductor filling in, he garnered raves. Ditto for this exceptional movie. Not quite a biopic, as filmmaker Doug Tirola makes clear—a proper one might be hours long—this film, comprised only of Bernstein’s own voice from tapes and readings from personal letters, recounting the importance of music, his own process, how music informs his life, still manages to touch all bases: his political activism—starting with the Berlin Wall, and coming to the “Kotel” in Jerusalem.

BERNSTEIN’S WALL was actually ready prior to MAESTRO, and the filmmakers—including producer Susan Bedusa-- strategically held it back. Bradley Cooper’s focus on the Bernstein’s marriage to Felicia Montenegro and homosexuality was a point of contention. What about Bernstein’s politics? At an early BERNSTEIN’S WALL screening put together by Peggy Siegal, Peter Duchin, who had attended Bernstein’s legendary parties, remembered the infamous one Tom Wolfe sensationalized in his Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Chasers. Duchin said the encounter was Lenny’s wife Felicia’s idea to bring the Black Panthers to the Dakota: Let’s just hear what they have to say. A not-so-outrageous event that nevertheless made headlines.

Tirola illuminates these subjects: Black Panthers, McCarthyism, Bernstein’s Talmudic style as a teacher. His pulse attuned to the politics of the day, and mensch that he was, Leonard Bernstein did not turn away. Jewish, he fixed neither his nose nor his name. And even though Bernstein clearly states that at age 10 he wished his strict immigrant father dead—he was dismayed at his son’s career choice—Lenny came to understand and to love him.

At Four Twenty-Five, Julie Taymor and Elliot Goldenthal, Ted Hope and Vanessa Hope, Suzanne Vega, John Patrick Schanley, Paul Schrader were among the guests dining family style—ravioli, salmon, Wagyu beef tenderloin. A state-of-the-art Peggy Siegal event, the evening featured a conversation with the filmmaker Doug Tirola whose passion for his subject is a great match for this big picture of Leonard Bernstein’s awesome contribution to cultural history.