My first trip to New York was for my Juilliard School audition in the spring of 1969. I stayed at The Osborne, an historic apartment house catty corner from Carnegie Hall. Leonard Bernstein had lived there until shortly before that time, as my North Carolina School of the Arts friend and host informed me. That same evening I met Mr. Bernstein in the green room at Carnegie, after a Schumann Liederabend where he accompanied Jennie Tourel.* Mayor John Lindsay was sitting in the next box. I wanted to shake hands with the man I knew so well from the “Young People’s Concerts” on TV. He looked up from a foot-and-a-half below me, gave me his irresistible grin and an appreciative once over. I was very tall, thin, rather handsome and had brown curly hair at the time. There were other interesting encounters with the celebrated man later on, but no time for those now.
I found the much-anticipated Bernstein biopic “Maestro” to be largely a disappointment, but one moment caught my attention. A scene in the family’s apartment in The Dakota had a harpsichord in it. Years ago I was surprised to see a photograph online of Lennie seated at a harpsichord in the very apartment, with his family casually arrayed around the room. I later learned it was an instrument by William Dowd of Boston, and later of Paris as well. I knew Dowd somewhat. He delivered two instruments – the same model as Bernstein’s – to Juilliard while I was there, and he was a close associate of my teacher, Albert Fuller. Another picture of Bernstein’s daughter playing the instrument is now circulating on the internet – see below for both.
The movie was filmed partly at the family’s country house in Connecticut, but the apartment was copied on a soundstage at the Paramount Studios in Los Angeles. Someone in the prop department scared up the harpsichord shown below in a screenshot from my TV. It was probably the best they could do, but it was a long way from a respectable Taskin copy by Bill Dowd. One can make out the name “Maendler-Schramm” on the tin-lined nameplate. This Munich builder was possibly the worst of the Germans who decided that the historical historical was in need of improvement, in the general direction of a Panzerkreuzer. Maendler at one point patented an action that responded to variable touch with dynamics, like a fortepiano. He called it a “Bachklavier”, and declared that it was what the Thomaskantor had dreamt of all his life.
A big Maendler-Schramm weighed as much as a baby grand piano, had a heavier action, and sounded more like Bösendorfer than a Ruckers. They usually were veneered and had voluted cheekpieces. Occasionally, like the one in question, they were slanted, but I never saw a painted Maendler-Schramm. This blue paint job looks a bit battered, but who knows, it may have just been a sloppy attempt to match the one formerly on Central Park West. The Bernsteins had a pretty Tiffany lamp on the music stand, not the fake double chandelier in the movie.
I don’t know of any recordings of Maestro Bernstein playing the harpsichord, which is probably just as well. He left us an absolute masterpiece in the score of “West Side Story” – legacy enough for anybody. I saw the original stage version in, of all places, the Semper Opera in Dresden not long ago. As its creator-choreographer Jerome Robbins conceived it, the work had far more ballet in it than the 1961 movie.** Two companions were deeply offended that the actress playing Maria was not a Latina. “Woke” had not yet arrived in Saxony at the time.
Saint Sylvester’s Day, 2023
*I had vaguely heard of Miss Tourel, but had no idea she was Stravinsky’s original Baba the Turk, and had premiered song cycles by Hindemith, Poulenc and Bernstein himself.
**I sometimes saw the great man stalking around Juilliard, looking like he would snarl at anyone who approached him. I have not seen the Spielberg remake, nor will I ever.
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