By Carol Davis
SAN DIEGO —Maestro: The Art of Leonard Bernstein is Hershey Felder’s personal love letter to Leonard Bernstein. Felder, the consummate master of bringing musical genius alive by adopting the persona of the masters and becoming them has been a treat for yours truly in the past. He has paid tribute to George Gershwin, Chopin, and Beethoven. Somehow or other though, his tribute or valentine to Bernstein struck a different note. With Bernstein, who is obviously more contemporary than the others and audiences might still have recollections of his life, Hershey brings out the best and the worst of the maestro.
That he admired and followed Bernstein’s career is evidenced throughout. Felder does draw the parallels between his art and that of Bernstein’s. While Bernstein’s art was making music, “the most difficult and complex music—accessible to all”, Felder’s art is creating “rich characters from the lives of these composers”… and delves into the art that goes into composing it.
And the fact that their early years followed similar paths makes Bernstein’s life even more meaningful to Hershey, the storyteller and maestro. Bernstein was born of Jewish Ukrainian émigré parents who settled in Lawrence, Mass. They later moved to the Boston area where he attended Boston Latin and Harvard.
Felder was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada to parents of Polish and Hungarian backgrounds. In their early years they both attended Hebrew Schools and Hebrew Academies. Both sets of parent’s Eastern European traditions dominated their early upbringing up to and including some of the compositions they later penned. (Kaddish in 1963 by Bernstein and Alayih, Concerto on Israeli Themes by Felder)
Starting out on a rather wistful note, Felder opens his show with Bernstein’s “Somewhere” from West Side Story and for the remaining one hundred minutes we get the impression that with all the praise and covet Bernstein was awarded during his lifetime his ambitions of becoming the next great American composer were never were satisfied, still asking “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” and “Am I a great composer?”
His fame as musical director of the New York Philharmonic, conductor, teacher, mentor, creator, Maestro, Broadway star and composer seemed a payback to his observant father who turned his nose down at the young Bernstein who yearned to play the piano and who paid for his own lessons when he realized that was the only way he would grow!
But it was Bernstein’s personal life with Felder in the driver’s seat that cuts through the greatness and shows a more selfish and anguished soul than can be heard in his recordings and works. With Boston accent in hand (somewhat) and becoming each of the important characters (Bernstein’s religious father who had a deep Yiddish accent, his two daughters and son, his sister and his wife) in Bernstein’s life, Felder takes us on the trajectory of Bernstein’s wanting to do it all in his lifetime without looking back at the cost to those near and dear to him, particularly his wife of over 25 years. (Especially his homosexual indiscretions that haunted him throughout his life.)
With Felder sitting at the piano, as Maestro Bernstein sans cigarettes and gravely voice, his life unfolds. He is the consummate, musicologist, conductor and teacher as he was to millions of children during his Young Peoples Concerts. The story of Bernstein’s legacy is told in a way that incorporates the process, the examples and the personality while playing snippets from West Side Story, Bernstein’s Piano Sonata”, Lamentations (from Symphony #1: Jeremiah), Glitter and be Gay from Candide and Maria from West Side Story.
But the piece de resistance is Felder, (the accomplished musician) who wrote the book, and is the number one guy. Along with his long time director Joel Zwick they have the exercise down pat. Having worked together on four collaborations they know what works and what doesn’t. With the help of Erik Carstensen’s sound design, Francois-Pierre Couture’s lighting design and Andrew Wilder’s video projections Maestro: The Art of Leonard Bernstein brings back memories of a man deceased for a mere 20 years, leading up to the golden age of Bernstein and thensome.
And somewhere out there, somehow, Bernstein is looking down with approval at this bittersweet valentine.
It’s another brilliant work not to be missed.
See you at the theatre.
Dates: through Aug. 28th
Organization: Old Globe Theatre
Phone: 619-234-5623
Production Type: Musical Biography
Where: 1363 Old Globe Way
Ticket Prices: $39.00-$90.00
Web: theoldglobe.org
Venue: Conrad Preby’s Theatre
*
Davis is a San Diego based theatre critic. She may be contacted at carol.davis@sdjewishworld.com