Talent Show

Composer-Conductor Leonard Bernstein raises his baton this week on CBS's Omnibus to conduct Handel's Messiah. But a great many of his viewers are certain to be disappointed. They would much rather hear talented Lennie Bernstein talk about music than play or conduct it.

Bernstein, 37, has built his fanatic audience in a series of three Omnibus programs. In the first he discussed the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, and used an orchestra to trace the changes Beethoven made in the movement and patterning of his music. Says Bernstein: "Nobody knew whether people would sit still for 45 minutes on a subject like this. I had a notebook full of Beethoven's rejected sketches. We put them back into the symphony to see how it would have sounded if he hadn't been so determined on perfection."

Plumbers & Sociologists. Next Bernstein tackled "The Jazz World," and held viewers spellbound with an intense, often intricate and always absorbing explanation of syncopation. He followed it with another 45-minute show on "The Art of Conducting" that answered for thousands the question of what--if anything--the baton-wielder is doing while the orchestra plays. Omnibus and Bernstein were staggered by the response: "We had letters from plumbers, sociologists, little children and old men. Apparently, hundreds of people identified themselves with the conductor, standing in front of their screens with rulers and pencils in their hands and giving the beat and tempo. Even musicians liked it. I should have thought experts like Isaac Stern and Jennie Tourel would have been bored to tears, but they thought the show did a great deal for music, for the whole business of music."

As a teacher, Bernstein is intense yet detached, dedicated yet wellrounded. He is contemptuous of the cult of "music appreciation," and thinks that love of music should be as complex and emotional as love itself. "We live in our emotions," he argues, "and that is the area a teacher must reach--and as soon as possible. If you can strike an emotional spark, then you can teach anything."

Medea in Milan. Harvard-bred (A.B., '39) Leonard Bernstein first flashed into musical prominence as a composer (Fancy Free, Trouble in Tahiti, On the Town), and is regarded as one of the most talented of U.S. conductors. Two years ago, with five days' preparation, he directed Milan's La Scala orchestra in the seldom-staged Medea of Cherubini, starring Maria Callas. To composing and conducting, he added teaching at Tanglewood and Brandeis University, spends his spare moments with his wife, Actress Felicia Montealegre, and three-year-old daughter. He worries that he may be scattering his talent: "Diversification means you can arrive brand-new and fresh at each undertaking, but you may also lose your line of development, especially in composing." Now his problem of too many skills is further threatened by his emergence as a TV performer. Bernstein is committed to two more Omnibus appearances this season, but his lively mind teems with dozens of projects: "I want to examine Bach and Mozart. People are always saying to me: 'Mozart is so tinkly; how can he be great?' If I can take them into his music, I think I can give them the answer." He also plans to investigate the art of singing with the help of fiery Soprano Callas ("A great actress as well as a great singer"), and the subject of dissonance intrigues him: "Everybody talks about dissonance; no one knows exactly what it is." Finally: "I want to do a show on the American musical comedy and how it got that way.

Its highly sophisticated form is imitated all over the world--usually very badly.

If you ask a master of the form how he does it, he can't tell you: he just does it.

I'd like to try and spell out what makes South Pacific so much the product of our time and country . . ." At this point, Bernstein is apt to drop his expressive hands helplessly and conclude: "There are millions of things I want to do. I'm afraid there just isn't time for all of them."

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