High life
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Leonard Bernstein wants musicians all over the world to demonstrate for nuclear disarmament by wearing a red tour- niquet round their arms on 25 August, his 65th birthday. The lightning conductor for radical chic causes also suggests that British orchestras should march on the American base at Upper Heyford similarly attired in tourniquets and various other bandages. Bernstein needs no introduction. He first made a fool of himself during the Sixties when he threw a fund-raising party in his Fifth Avenue triplex for black people who like to shoot cops. More recently he called President Ronald Reagan the most dangerous and evil man in the world. Now he wants every musician to dress like Napoleon's soldiers on their retreat from Russia and help Bruce Kent win a Nobel Prize for services rendered to those nice looking, fedora-wearing folk who run the USSR.
Now there are a lot of humbugs, charlatans, and public nuisances who are the darlings of the intelligentsia and the media, and I would include Bernstein amongst them but for his musical theatricality. His is one of those rare minds ever to remain in kindergarten, yet his talents, however self-promotional, are undeniable. To paraphrase Noel Coward, he is every other inch a conductor. And he truly believes that if we disarmed, the Soviets would treat us the way we treated them when they were weak and about to go under. What bugs me is the dispropor- tionate amount of publicity and influence actors and other such lightweights (where politics are concerned) have on the unaware public. Bernstein and his ilk have been wrong about Castro, wrong about the North Vietnamese, wrong about the after- math of the Shah's downfall, wrong about the Sandinistas (as has the left-wing and liberal press) yet they persist in trying to tell us that they know best. I guess it is the highest form of egocentricity there is.
When I asked my new best friend, the brilliant director of Brideshead Revisited, Charles Sturridge, why actors tend to be more egocentric than, say, writers or painters, he explained it as follows: The first thing any actor must do is to grab people's attention. Having accomplished that, the middle-range actor can make peo- ple listen, and following that, the great ac- tor can make people understand. Well, I know you'll all agree that Lenny Bernstein is an actor who can grab our and the media's attention, but that is about all, I hope. Nevertheless I will illustrate my magnanimity and wish the old chap a very happy 65th birthday.
Needless to say, there are some conduc-
tors who are neither actors nor do they take themselves seriously. Take the case of my friend Charlie Davis. A little more than a year ago Charlie and I were depressed and in New York. We both had personal pro- blems concerning women. So we got drunk and stayed drunk for a couple of days. On the morning of the third I realised I had to get down to Argentina because if I didn't the war might be over with me still in the Big Apple. So 1 dragged Charlie in to the Argentine Consulate where we were given some very dirty looks because Charlie was predicting rather loudly that the Iron Lady would make mincemeat of Leopoldo. We said a drunken, almost tearful goodbye and headed for our respective homes and the hell we each had to face after a three-day absence. I didn't see Charlie after that until this week. Although he thinks life is pretty futile, Charlie went to Kassal in Germany and conducted two operas without any rehearsal and his notices were brilliant. My father-in-law happened to be there and told me that Die Fledermaus and 11 Travatore were both extremely well conducted by a man who looked as if he was mocking everything including himself.
Now that's what I call doing it with mir- rors. Charlie likes to get wrecked but when the time comes he delivers. The theme is to be laid back and still make it. I wish Lenny would take a lesson from Charlie for a change and relax. There are enough bad ac- tors in CND without you, Lenny baby.
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