I absolutely detest that title, it's one of the things that has ruined the profession of conducting. I detest the style of conducting associated with it.
OH, SOMEONE made a "bio-pic" about Lenny? I hadn't known. Aaron Copland said that whenever a literary man writes two words about music one of them will be wrong. While I think Aaron was being generous about literary men, when a movie guy writes two words about music, all ten of them will be wrong. And that's before the "auteur" gets hold of it, talking about pretentious titles I detest along with the milieu that led to it.
I am not interested. Wasn't a fan while he was alive and he's been dead for almost thirty four years. I can tell you I don't own a single album he conducted and never did. Though I have read some of his early work, which was never recorded, was great from musicians who worked under him in the early 40s, he declined into stardom early. He ended up a spoiled conductor. There are a handful of his pieces I think were good, the dance sequences from WSS, a few of the songs, the second of the Chichester Psalms, . . . but he wasn't a great composer, either. His Norton Lectures were embarrassing to listen to.
Ah, I love reviews of movies by people who haven't seen them.
ReplyDeleteBTW, Sparky, forgetting your general dismissal of Lenny as an artist, which is predictably (hilariously) petty, snobbish and wrong, you might be interested to know that MAESTRO is only peripherally about Lenny's musical career. The real theme of the flick is Gay Men and the Women Who Loved Them, in the American cultural milieu between the end of WW II and Stonewall. I found that needlessly reductive given its purported subject, but it's certainly a valid approach for a film.
If you think what I wrote was a movie review, you've got an even lower reading proficiency than I previously thought. No where did I say a word about the movie in question, only about movies of that genera in general. I doubt anyone has made a "bio-pic" without lying about real people in the course of making it up. Knowing what a liar you are, I'm not surprised that wouldn't be an issue for you.
DeleteLenny's sex life is almost as uninteresting to me as yours. Though not as much as a "bio-pic" on any topic. I remember gay life before Stonewall. As I recall hearing it, Bernstein used Metropolis's gayness against him after his marriage because he wanted the NYP position, he wasn't above such stuff.
I'm about as interested in what a straight guy like Cooper has to say about being gay a couple of generations before he was born as I do what a white guy has to say about being Black.
I didn't say anything about Lenny's career that isn't obvious in his recordings and compositions. He was a spoiled, self-indulgent conductor and pianist and, other than a few good though not great pieces, he was as derivative a composer as Andrew Lloyd Webber. The several fine composers who pointed out he chose stardom and wealth over artistic accomplishment got that exactly right.
Oh, fuck off, you sad, joyless putz . If Lenny had written nothing except the overture to CANDIDE, he would deserve to be one of the immortals.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, stupy, that was Blogger spell check, I do know how to spell it, it must have gotten through without my noticing.
ReplyDelete