12 JUNE 1971, Page 6

Composer discomposed

If Humphrey Burton is now on good terms with the ITA, he'must be less well regarded by a German film production company called Intertel, for whom he was recently making a film in Vienna of Leonard Bernstein con- ducting Mahler's Ninth Symphony. Bern- stein is a friend of Burton's—and indeed played the organ at Burton's wedding in New York to his second wife—and he asked as a friendly favour that the film be altered. His chief objections, it emerged, were that his underwear was showing, his hair looked unkempt, he was overweight, and a pimple on his left cheek would be perceptible to an aghast audience. Burton is complying. Had Suzy Knickerbocker, Daily Mail col- umnist, been Present. she might have trium- phantly pointed out the advantages of the still photograph over the moving picture. Her own attractive phctograph in the Mail was taken sixteen years ago, in 1955, a date at which even Bernstein might have been satisfied by his appearance.