Leonard Bernstein - Reaching for the Note
by Susan Lacy
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DVD details
Actor: Alexander Bernstein, John Corigliano, Jon Deak, Leonard Bernstein, Nina BernsteinDirector: Susan Lacy
Cinematographer: Ed Marritz
Producer: Susan Lacy
Writer: Susan Lacy
Producer: Dina Hossain
Producer: Karen Bernstein
Producer: Margaret Smilow
Producer: Tamar Hacker
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: Academy Ratio, 1.33:1
Running Time: 117 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-11-24
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Winstar
DVD Reviews of Leonard Bernstein - Reaching for the Note
DVD Review: Moving and comprehensive
Summary: 5 Stars
Having just read a Bernstein bio and listened to many of his original compositions, I watched this 2-hour documentary and found it very accurate and thorough. Many of the principals of Lenny's life are interviewed, including his kids and brother. You'll get a great sense of the conflicted man. His stature will only grow.DVD Review: just FINE!
Summary: 5 Stars
Reviewer Hadrian12's spotlight review says perfectly everything to say about this film. Thanks for that.
I can think of no more compelling 20th c. musician. Everything about Reaching for the Note is about the living lamp that is Bernstein's work, about the music he became; always breathing life, whatever his job. The film spends generous time with West Side Story, with a remarkable stretch of essential comments by Sondheim, Carol Lawrence, &Arthur Larents interspersing a cache of unbelievable rehearsal and performance footage. It's a master class in filmmaking, and we believe again how great a work West Side Story is. His symphonies, greater than the world knows, confirm the film's heart. In generous performance passages of the Kaddish Sym., the voice overs are subdued, as if in the live presence of the music. The film never wavers in its tenderness toward Bernstein, and the Idea he embodied.
Best thing about this American Masters series perfect jewel, is hearing Bernstein's occasional remarks - to hear his voice again!. About his own intensity, he says "What I enjoy, I want to share." Enjoy this film treat! It proves the inerrant spirituality of Art, and shows the door to mediocre moments.
DVD Review: A Caped Prima Donna, but he Loved Music, and it Shows!
Summary: 5 Stars
Using interviews with his son and daughters, his brother, the writers, choreographers, and conductors he worked with, and many of his friends, and clips of his rehearsals and performances, we see the life of a very talented, but troubled genius.
His personal life was torn between wanting to be a family man and good father, versus his strong attraction to the gay lifestyle. His musical life was likewise pulled in several directions: he wanted to be a conductor, composer, and a teacher.
Remarkably, he succeeded rather well at everything he tried. Like so many geniuses, he was both arrogant at times, and then at other times, insecure. For all his exceptional abilities, he was a human being, troubled by trying to figure out just how he should fit into the world.
If you love and appreciate Leonard Bernstein, you should find this a very good view of his life. Even if you have had doubts about his temperamental, caped, grand "prima donna" side, this will help you become more sympathetic to his struggle to understand himself.
DVD Review: Absolute BERNSTEIN!
Summary: 5 Stars
It has been said many times that music is the universal language. While the truth of this statement is self-evident, occasionally even universal languages require translators. For that, great men such as Leonard Bernstein have stepped to the fore to assist the rest of us in understanding what is perhaps man's single greatest art form.
This is a magnificent documentary of the life of this incredible individual. Leonard Bernstein can be called the Carl Sagan of classical music. What the Cornell astronomer did to popularize science to a wide audience, so too did the conductor do the same for classical music. The present DVD traces the remarkable career of Bernstein from his early flirtations with fame up through to his death in 1990.
The footage contains commentary by his daughters, son, friends and fellow conductors and musicians. Some of the notable names to compile the latter groups are Michael Tilson Thomas, Seiji Ozawa, Isaac Stern and Andre Previn. All angles of his life are covered, from his professional life to his personal life to his struggles with his bi-sexuality.
The shortcomings of this DVD are few, but I am compelled to point them out. For one, it is only hinted at a few times just how diverse Bernstein's taste in music was. Not everyone knows this, but he was a huge fan of both the BEATLES and PINK FLOYD. Some anecdotes from the likes of people such as David Gilmour and Paul McCartney would have complemented this DVD nicely. Both knew Lenny and were friends of his.
Also, it would have been nice to have learned more about his childhood. They pretty much skimmed over that, for the most part. The "story" portrayed almost begins where he sub-conducted for Bruno Walter, getting his big break.
That said, this is a must-buy for all fans of music, all fans of Leonard Bernstein, and all fans of the human race. Paul Hindemuth once said "Those who make music together cannot be enemies. So long as the music lasts." Hence, nobody could ever be a true enemy of the great Leonard Bernstein, for he made music with the entire world.
DVD Review: Good but a little white-washed
Summary: 4 Stars
This PBS documentary is loaded with clips from Lenny's long career, and captures many of his great moments on film. There are also the requisite interviews with people fawning over him. No mention of the extremely negative (often deservedly so) reviews he got in his early days at the helm of the NYPO, or the sordid story of how he wrestled the top job there away from Dmitri Mitropoulos by "outing" him when he himself was flagrantly bisexual. What he did to his wife, emotionally, in her final years, is only briefly hinted at. The whole Tom Wolfe/Radical Chic incident is also only glossed over in about a minute, and the effects this and other "anti-Lenny" incidents had on his psyche are barely mentioned. His depression is talked about, but the reasons behind it are not. But TV documentaries usually skim the surface this way, and the real treat is in the performances and interviews captured here. This is a great two hours for any Bernstein lover. They may not learn anything new, but they'll have a wonderful time reliving the old.
Description of Leonard Bernstein - Reaching for the Note
Originally aired on PBS's American Masters series, this evocative biography of the American composer, conductor, and de facto musical evangelist Leonard Bernstein offers a compelling balance of musical scholarship and personal insight. It's a fitting approach to the brilliant--and emotional--life and art of Bernstein, who elevated Broadway musical theater, demystified and democratized classical music for two generations of American children, and brought a true New Yorker's vigor and directness to his conducting.Writer-director Susan Lacy establishes the film's sympathetic tone in its opening shots of Bernstein's funeral cortege as it passed along Manhattan streets in 1990. Underscoring the footage is the elegiac second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, the final piece conducted by Bernstein at his final performance months earlier at Tanglewood. Scenes from that last concert (and a return to that slow, funereal march) are the inevitable conclusion of Lacy's film, which finds ample drama over the course of approximately two hours.
Lacy traces the arc of Bernstein's career from his earliest triumphs as a young conductor through his Broadway successes (culminating in West Side Story), his historic network television outreach, the frustrations encountered over his "serious" compositions (often derided, ultimately vindicated), and his autumnal work abroad conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. Bernstein's private demons--anguish over the tradeoff between a conductor's glory and a composer's productivity, the ridicule invited by his impassioned political activism, the conflict between his devotion to his family and his bisexuality, bouts of depression suffered in his later years--are addressed as well.
Excellent archival footage and a literate script are enhanced by interviews with his brother and children; collaborators including Jerome Robbins, Isaac Stern, and Stephen Sondheim; and conductors including John Mauceri, Seiji Ozawa, and Michael Tilson Thomas. --Sam Sutherland
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