There’s a new Peter Danish play opening off Broadway in mid-March about an imagined last meeting between Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein at the Hotel Imperial in Vienna.
We’ve had a sneak peek at a page of script:
HERBERT: Leonard, I do not understand why you ignore the composer’s instructions in favor of your own ideas. What concerns me is simply as correct a rendition of the notes as possible.
LENNY : Then, to my mind, you wish to be a photographer rather than a painter. You wish to capture the essence rather than create something new, something fresh.
HERBERT: You’re missing my point! We are so blessed today because for centuries music was something only for the rich. So, we have a sacred duty to make music in such a way that we can bring pleasure to as many people as possible. It is not about you or me.
LENNY: And to think they called you elitist!
HERBERT: I am not elitist! I am super elitist! And I am immensely proud of it!
LENNY: But, Herbert , you’ve said over and over you needed to manipulate the music, mold the music, and make it bend to your will in order to create the beautiful Von Karajan sound. I, on the other hand, have no desire to make any orchestra produce a “Bernstein sound.”
HERBERT: So, you say! Yet, in your Mahler, you insist upon the grandest, loudest highs and the tiniest, quietest lows. You saturate every performance with such lurching extremes – none of which is specifically called for in the score, mind you! Shall I go on?
LENNY: Please! Since you seem to know me better than I know myself.
HERBERT: Your tempi! You speed up the fast sections and retard the slow sections to such a degree that it often becomes completely shapeless! You always say you want the playing to be “a reflection of the composer’s intention”, yet your fingerprints can be found everywhere! Not a passage, not a note, are clean and free of your touch and your influence.
LENNY: It’s called, in-ter-pre-ta-tion, Herbert!
HERBERT: It’s called e-go! Van-i-ty!
LENNY: That’s rich! I’m being called vain by a man who’s had what? Five? Six face lifts?
HERBERT: Leonard, you could draw the most expressive playing from an orchestra that I ever heard. But! You failed to remember one simple and immutable truth! (He holds up the score, then places it against his chest and folds his hands across it in reverence) A musical score is a sacred thing! A hallowed, sanctified document. You and I are merely its custodians for a very short while. It is something to be venerated.
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The two characters are played by actresses – Helen Schneider and Lucca Züchner.
Opening night March 16.
The post Exclusive: What Karajan told Lenny (and what he heard back) appeared first on Slippedisc.
