[music]

Kerry Nolan: This is All Of It. I'm Kerry Nolan in for Alison Stewart. Thank you so much for spending part of your day with us. On today's show, this weekend marks the 11th Annual Schomburg Center Black Comic Book Festival. We'll preview some of this year's highlights. We'll talk about Georgia O'Keeffe: To See Takes Time with a curator at the Museum of Modern Art and we'll talk with cookbook author Alison Roman about her latest Sweet Enough. That's the plan, so let's get it started.

[Symphony No. 5 by Ludwig van Beethoven plays]

Kerry Nolan: This is Beethoven's 5th, the first piece ever performed by the New York Philharmonic way back in the 1840s. The New York Philharmonic, well, they're America's oldest symphony orchestra. Now, the Phil is the subject of a new podcast series from our friends at WQXR, where I spend a little bit of time, called The NY Phil Story: Made in New York.

The podcast takes listeners backstage at the Philharmonic and it features conversations with musicologists, historians, and members of the orchestra, as well as deep dives into major performances. The NY Phil Story is hosted by author and filmmaker Jamie Bernstein and, yes, that name is familiar. She is, in fact, the daughter of former New York Philharmonic music director Leonard Bernstein. Jamie, welcome to All Of It.

Jamie Bernstein: Thank you very much.

Kerry Nolan: Listeners, we want to hear from you. Tell us about your relationship with the New York Philharmonic. Our number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. What's your favorite memory of a New York Phil concert, your favorite recording? Did you, like me, watch the Young People's Concerts on CBS? Are you a musician who's performed with the New York Phil or do you have another connection? Call us. We want to hear your stories at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Jamie, one of the first pieces of music we hear on the podcast isn't Beethoven's 5th but Rossini's William Tell Overture. Let's talk a little bit about that song's place within your personal connection to the orchestra.

Jamie Bernstein: I sure do have a personal connection with the orchestra. My brother and sister and I almost think of them as our extended family, really.

Kerry Nolan: Oh, wow. Okay.

Jamie Bernstein: When our dad died, I remember the three of us going to the New York Philharmonic and feeling like we all needed that group hug. We all felt like we'd lost our daddy, you know?

Kerry Nolan: Oh, yes.

Jamie Bernstein: In any case, about William Tell. My father's very first Young People's Concert, which happened in 1958, I was five years old. He came out on the stage and he didn't say anything. He just started up the orchestra and they launched into [imitates William Tell Overture] and then [imitates William Tell Overture], which we all know so well. Then he stopped them at the [imitates William Tell Overture]. He stopped the orchestra and he turned around to the audience and said, "So what did that make you think of?" Of course, as one, the young audience yelled, "The Lone Ranger."

Kerry Nolan: Right. [laughs]

Jamie Bernstein: My father said, "That's what I thought you'd say. My five-year-old daughter Jamie, who's sitting right up there, said the same thing, 'Hi-yo, Silver, the Lone Ranger.'"

Kerry Nolan: Oh, my gosh. Now, when you were growing up, the New York Phil, the people and the places, they were just where your dad worked, or did you know it was something special very early on?

Jamie Bernstein: When you're a really little kid, your parents are just your parents and your family. Their friends are just your family and their friends. You have no frame of reference for the fact that maybe there's something remarkable about it. I never thought twice about the fact that my dad would get up and put on this very unusual garb and go right across the street from our apartment because we lived in The Osborne catty-cornered from Carnegie Hall.

Kerry Nolan: Oh, okay.

Jamie Bernstein: Off he would go to conduct his concert. I just thought that was just an everyday thing.

Kerry Nolan: That's really interesting. We already have a phone call. I want to encourage you, if you have a particular connection with the New York Phil, whether it's personal or professional, give us a call at 212-433-9692. Elliot in Manhattan, welcome to All Of It.

Elliot: Well, I'm thrilled to be with you and with Ms. Bernstein. This is very exciting. That Young People's Concert with the William Tell Overture is one of my very earliest memories.

Kerry Nolan: Wow.

Elliot: I grew up watching those. When your father passed away, a colleague of mine who was an opera translator, and I had directed one of his pieces, he and his wife called I and my husband up and said, "There's this memorial concert at Avery Fisher and we can't go. If you'd like to go, we'll call the box office and they'll provide you with a location slip." We went over. My husband had sung under your dad's direction as a chorister.

There was not only the program. There was a whole memorial booklet of comments from the orchestra members. Some of the music, I was familiar with. Some of it, I confess that I had never heard performed before. I had all this material in my hands and I thought, "God, there's no way, in the next 15 minutes, I could read all this." I suddenly thought, "You know, I am going to do what Mr. Bernstein taught us to do all those years watching those programs. I'm just going to open up my ears and open up my mind and heart and let the music come on in."

Jamie Bernstein: That's the way to go.

Kerry Nolan: Yes, indeed. Elliot, we've got a lot of people in line behind you, but thank you so much for sharing your story this morning. Our number is 212-433-9692, 433-WNYC. My guest is Jamie Bernstein. She is the host of the new podcast that dropped this past week on all the usual platforms, produced by WQXR, The NY Phil Story: Made in New York. Let's go to Debra in Westchester. Hi, Debra, welcome to All Of It.

Debra: Hi, good morning, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my call. I just was telling your screener that the Young People's Concerts, to this day, are one of the warmest memories I have of being with my two daughters from the time they were 4 until they were about 13. They're both in college now. They do not major in music, but they're still playing their flutes in college. It was just such an incredible time for us. We always set the time aside. My husband's super busy, but he always put it on the calendar. They loved the precursor activities that always happened in the halls before the concerts. Still, to this day, they bring it up, so thank you for all of the richness that your dad brought to our lives.

Kerry Nolan: What a lovely call. Thank you so much, Debra. Jamie, let's get back to the podcast. We want to continue to take your calls. Please, if you're holding on, hold on. We will get to you as soon as we can. Now, the New York Philharmonic, as I said in the intro, was founded in 1842. What do we need to know about New York back then to understand why the New York Phil was founded?

Jamie Bernstein: Well, this is what's so much fun about the podcast. It's like a history story and a music story. Music buffs will learn about history and the history buffs will learn about music. I learned a lot myself just through all of the elements in this podcast. Some of the experts that are interviewed in the course of the podcast, some of whom are historians, really paint the picture of what New York City was like back in the 1840s. It was so eye-opening to understand that this was a community that didn't have enough resources to have their own orchestra. When the Philharmonic finally founded itself, it was an unprecedented thing in the United States.

Kerry Nolan: Let's play a little bit from the podcast. It's from a section about the New York Phil's founding. The clip's about a minute and a half long and it features Douglas Shadle, a professor of musicology at Vanderbilt, and Erica Buurman from San José State University.

Douglas Shadle: We have a situation where there seems to be demand for concert repertoire because life is a little bit quiet. There's not music blaring on store speakers everywhere. To hear an orchestra is really a special, almost magical experience for people. There's a demand for this.

Dr. Erica Buurman: We have to remember that this is the 1840s. Music doesn't become popular in the way it can become popular today. I'm Dr. Erica Buurman. I'm the director of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San José State University in California. A symphony performance was still a very special and unusual thing. This is the time before recordings. When you go out to hear however many musicians on stage playing this music, it's going to be a real experience that forces you to sit up and pay attention in a way that you don't get from your everyday musical experiences in the 1840s.

Douglas Shadle: The orchestra simply don't have the personnel. One of the ideas behind the Philharmonic was to find enough players who could come together on a consistent basis throughout the year and perform these demanding works that simply could not be performed by these pickup orchestras that emerged in previous decades where it was just an entrepreneur who sets it up and tries to make a profit, and then they can't figure out how to make money. It just dissolves after that.

Kerry Nolan: That's really interesting that it was ragtag prior to the founding of the New York Phil.

Jamie Bernstein: It's really interesting. I'm fascinated to think about how back in that time, a symphony orchestra was one of the loudest things that could happen to you.

Kerry Nolan: That's true, yes.

Jamie Bernstein: The professor talked about how it had almost a magical quality. To have your hair blown back by the opening notes of Beethoven's 5th really must have been overwhelming.

Kerry Nolan: Oh, I'm sure. Let's go back to the phones. The phone lines are almost completely full. If you'd like to share your thoughts about the New York Philharmonic, whether personal or professional, we really want to hear your story at 212-433-9692. That's 433-WNYC. Carlos in Inwood, welcome to All Of It.

Carlos: Hello.

Kerry Nolan: Hi.

Carlos: Hi, Alison. As an immigrant kid growing up in the Bronx, my mom and I were walking in the park and we met a middle-aged Argentinian couple and became friends with them. They told us one day, "Do you know there's going to be a concert of the New York Philharmonic in Van Cortlandt Park?" I was about 13 or 14 years old. We went with this couple with our chairs like beach chairs and plastic chairs. They brought grapes and bread or whatever. Under the stars in Van Cortlandt Park in the massive cricket in soccer fields, my sewing machine operator mother and me got to experience for the first time classical music and the beautiful New York Philharmonic.

Kerry Nolan: Carlos, thank you so much for your call. It's obviously a very emotional memory for you. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Jamie, when we talk about the musicians and the audience, let's go back and talk about how they found enough players to make this orchestra that was not just something you did on a Friday night and you got your money and you went away.

Jamie Bernstein: Right. Well, that was the genius of this new model that they invented that would compel the musicians to stick around and even look after each other. They built in a way to take care of the sick ones or the retiring ones. They turned it into a community for themselves. That's what changed the whole outlook.

Kerry Nolan: That's a very interesting business model. Certainly, for that time, I would think.

Jamie Bernstein: Yes, it was unprecedented and it was what was required to allow this orchestra to exist.

Kerry Nolan: Let's go back to the phones. John in Middletown, New Jersey, his grandfather played with the Phil. Hi, John, welcome to All Of It.

John: Hi, thanks. My grandfather was the principal English hornet. In fact, he was appointed to that title by Jamie's father. He played for 42 years. I just wanted to thank Jamie. Her father was always so gracious to my family, including long after my grandfather died. He bumped into one of my cousins. He was just effusive and recounting how much beloved my grandfather was. He even remembered that my grandfather loved fishing. He had all these anecdotes. This was remarkable. Leonard Bernstein knew all these things. My grandfather had him in front of mind long after he had passed away. That was just a wonderful story and I think emblematic of what you've been saying about the family of the Philharmonic.

Jamie Bernstein: Oh, that's a wonderful story. Thank you for sharing that. It's so characteristic of my dad who had one of those lint collector brains where he remembered everything about everybody. I'm not surprised to hear that he remembered all these details in your family. That's a great story.

Kerry Nolan: John, thanks so much for calling. Jamie, the first piece of music that the New York Phil ever played as we played earlier was Beethoven's 5th Symphony. At that point, and it's hard to wrap your brain around this, it was less than 40 years old at the time. It was really a piece of contemporary music at the time. What does it say to you that the first performance was of Beethoven's 5th Symphony?

Jamie Bernstein: Well, to us now, it might seem like, "Well, obviously, they were going to start with Beethoven's 5th." Back then, it wasn't so obvious. Incredibly, Beethoven's 5th had only been performed in the United States a couple of times altogether because it was so hard to assemble large enough orchestras in the United States because you need so many forces to play Beethoven 5. Everybody was clamoring to hear it because there was lots and lots of buzz about this fantastic, new-ish symphony. Everybody knew about it, but nobody had heard it yet. It was a fantastic moment for New Yorkers to get to hear this giant symphony that they'd heard so much about but had never actually heard the music itself.

Kerry Nolan: Let's hear a little bit of the podcast dissection of that piece.

Erica Buurman: Famously, that first movement motif has been called "fate knocking at the door." In fact, the translation from the German is something more like "fate pounding at the portal." There's a sense of something extremely significant about this music that gets going from the very first bar. That really drives that movement throughout. It's simmering under the surface.

Speaker 1: Beethoven had this extraordinary gift for taking a movement, a piece to what seems to be a peak of intensity beyond which you can't go, and then topping it. That's what he does in the end. The coda of the first movement, it takes a piece that has been ravingly intense. He somehow manages to jack it up to an even higher level.

Kerry Nolan: You know what's so interesting to me as someone who was exposed to classical music early on and then abandoned it for rock and roll is that there's something very rock and roll about classical music, about the intensity and building it up, and then the release. A lot of these, not Beethoven, I don't think, but a lot of these composers were rock stars in their own time, their own ways.

Jamie Bernstein: I think of Franz Liszt. He was a big rock and roll star. The ladies used to faint when he performed-

Kerry Nolan: Oh my.

Jamie Bernstein: -because he was so handsome and dynamic and all that.

Kerry Nolan: [chuckles] My guest is Jamie Bernstein. She's the host of our new podcast, The NY Phil Story: Made in New York. We are taking your calls as well with your stories about your connections, whether personal or professional, to the New York Philharmonic. Our number is 212-433-9692, 433-WNYC. Jamie, the New York Phil's first performance was at the Apollo Rooms in Lower Manhattan because the ground wouldn't be broken on its current home, Lincoln Center, for more than 100 years. What do we know about the Apollo Rooms?

Jamie Bernstein: I had never even heard of the Apollo Rooms before getting involved in this podcast. I guess they were a series of large enough rooms to permit concerts and performances of all kinds. There was actually an even better venue spatially, which was the Metropolitan Opera House in those days. Apparently, it had terrible acoustics. The Philharmonic elected not to use the Met Opera House for their maiden voyage because they wanted somewhere where they could control the acoustics more.

Kerry Nolan: Now, their home since 1962 has been a space that is now called David Geffen Hall. It used to be Avery Fisher Hall and it was Philharmonic Hall before that. You've mentioned poor acoustics. That space had not always been beloved, I guess we could say, in part because of those acoustic issues. Have you been to the new space?

Jamie Bernstein: You cannot peel me out of the new space.

Kerry Nolan: [laughs]

Jamie Bernstein: I just love it. I love everything about it, starting with the acoustics, which are now astonishing. You feel like you can hear every single detail in an orchestral performance. You can hear it all blending together in just the right balance. It's really astonishing and it's beautiful. The other thing I love about it that is so timely is that they kind of opened up the whole building and made it somehow more accessible and more turned outward towards the city, which is exactly what the New York Philharmonic is doing altogether right now. The building reflects the intentions of the orchestra. It's great.

Kerry Nolan: Oh, that's so great to know. I have yet to get there, but I promise I will.

Jamie Bernstein: Run, don't walk.

Kerry Nolan: Yes, ma'am. Michael in Manhattan, welcome to All Of It.

Michael: Oh, hello. I was at Sony Music, then the CBS Records, when they were recording Maestro Bernstein and the Philharmonic. Anything he wanted to do, they would do in spite of everybody moaning about how much it costs. That simply isn't done now. There's nobody with that kind of prestige that brings it to the Philharmonic that is an automatic, "Yes, we must do that." It also reflects the changes in the way in which the music industry looks at this kind of recording.

Kerry Nolan: Thank you so much for your call, Michael. Before we go, I'm looking at the clock now. I can't believe that we only have a few minutes left together. Before I let you go, I wanted to talk a little bit about a new movie that's coming out that you are aware of, I'm sure.

Jamie Bernstein: Oh, yes.

Kerry Nolan: The Maestro with Bradley Cooper playing your dad, Carey Mulligan playing your mother, Maya Hawke plays you. How involved have you and your family been in the making of this movie?

Jamie Bernstein: Well, we are on the sidelines, of course, but Bradley Cooper is a very unusual person who works in the world of Hollywood. He's not a Hollywoody kind of guy at all. He's been incredibly generous to my brother or sister and me in sharing his whole process of making this film. He really invited us into his thought processes and he asked us a million questions about both of our parents. He even came to our house in Connecticut to the country house we've had since we were little kids. He so fell in love with the place that he wound up filming there.

Kerry Nolan: Oh, wow. All right, what are you looking forward to audiences seeing in this?

Jamie Bernstein: Oh, well, I think they'll be fascinated to see the progress of my father's life and career. It's not a biopic actually. It doesn't start at the beginning and end at the end. It jumps around a little bit, but it does really track the relationship of our parents. It starts quite early in my father's life and career and then goes forward. You get decades' worth of both of our parents and how everything evolves for each of them and the two of them together. It's amazing to see these different periods in my father's life being illustrated on the screen.

Kerry Nolan: With the time we have left, let's get back to the podcast, which is The NY Phil Story: Made in New York. The next episode in this series is called A Time to Mourn. What are you looking at in this particular episode?

Jamie Bernstein: Oh, this is an incredible episode. It's very intense and touching and describes the way the New York Philharmonic used their music-making to heal and comfort the nation when it was going through a tragedy. There are many instances of this happening, so it's incredibly touching. It really is.

Kerry Nolan: Tell us a little bit about how often the episodes drop. Where can we hear them?

Jamie Bernstein: Well, there are five altogether. The first one dropped last week and I think that the second one drops-- Does it drop this week?

Kerry Nolan: I think Wednesday. Wednesday or Thursday.

Jamie Bernstein: Every week then for the next few weeks, a new one will drop. They're all quite different from each other, so it's really fun.

Kerry Nolan: You can find them on whatever platform you use to load up your podcasts. It's called The NY Phil Story: Made in New York. Jamie Bernstein is the host and it has been such a pleasure to have you on All Of It. I'm so delighted I got to sit in the chair today and have a conversation with you.

Jamie Bernstein: Well, that makes two of us. I'm the one who's really delighted. Thank you.

Kerry Nolan: Our pleasure. Up next for the first time since 2020, the Schomburg Center's 11th Annual Black Comic Book Festival takes place in person. We'll get a preview of the event coming up next. This is All Of It.

 

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