“For me, life is beginning at ninety.” - Seymour Bernstein

I'm Seymour Bernstein and this is living the classical life [Music] Seymour I'm so happy I'm so thrilled to welcome you to our show here Thank You well you know I've seen your segments a lot and I always wondered why you never contacted well I was waiting for your 90th birthday Oh would you just celebrated this week so congratulations I understand that the city of New York made a formal Proclamation at which 28th is amazing I received an email from the Council of the New York City and they said we want to celebrate your 90th birthday by making a proclamation on you and I asked everybody what's a proclamation what does that I had no idea what that was you know what it is don't you I mean this is it forget they have language that says whereas dot dot dot that's right and my whole biography was on thee it was given to me Thursday in a community center on Columbus Avenue and all my pupils and friends were there and 28 people spoke and Michael Kimmelman you know he's my pupil from urinary he said to me Seymour they don't know they don't even do that when royalty dies they're never 28 people speaking so here I was alive very much alive to enjoy it all what was it like to receive that type of recognition at this stage of your life well I can only be grateful hmm I tell everybody don't believe all the stories that older people tell you about getting old are dreadful it is I tell them that you know for me life is beginning at 90 I'm just learning to play the piano properly at 90 did you know that I really am that that brings me to the realization that what happened subsequent to the film was that you have in fact resumed performing well I wouldn't say I resumed performing in the full sense of the word which means giving recitals I don't give recitals anymore but I have appeared and given some solos at various programs along the way my question about that is so if in the film you talk about at some point in your life feeling that you had to retire from performing and probably you thought that that was the last you would do it on account of the nerves which was one of the subjects of the film is that right well actually there was a a gross misunderstanding about why I retired naturally stage fright is part of what it is that we do you're a performer you live with it don't you it's my biggest issue I don't know of any great performer who hasn't suffered terrible stage fright the greatest example of this was vladimir horowitz it got so bad that he had to retire for 12 years performers don't like to speak about it because they're ashamed of it as I explained to Ethan Hawke you should be proud of it because it's a sign that you're responsible if you weren't responsible you wouldn't you wouldn't experience days right never mind that the main reason why I called my career to a halt at the age of 50 by the way list did to move it that's right I'm like list there you go I always had an urge to be creative and practicing eight hours a day to give concerts what you have to do you know and then teaching the rest of the day no time to be creative so the other thing is that like most performers I did suffer stage fright and I never liked the way I performed in public because of it and I said I'm gonna stick to this until I can perform in spite of my stage fright well I did I succeeded in doing that there's no secret about it you just have to be properly prepared nobody speaks about that you know they speak about psychotherapy pills that you can take do everything under the Sun what you should eat on the day of your performance but nobody ever speaks about being properly prepared I started to perform better than I did in my living room and I said to myself you have to be good to yourself at this stage of your life now give it up and devote your time to being creative so I didn't tell anyone I didn't even tell my mother I arranged a farewell concert at the 92nd Street Y and when it was over I was liberated and when I told everybody they will had nervous breakdowns you can't do this how can you do this you have a responsibility to the public I said well my responsibility now is to be creative so this is what I feel about being creative when we give concerts like that some of the great artists today that's not being creative that's being recreative being creative means that you write down a series of notes on the manuscript paper and then you go on from there you compose right yes or you write the word the and you finish the sentence that's being creative or you paint right so my personal feeling is that in terms of developing ourselves fully the combination of being recreated and creative does the trick it will develop both sides of the brain as a matter of fact when I started to write my book with your own two hands see I'm primarily left-handed right I noticed that when I was after I was writing the book my right hand started to feel like my left and now I don't know which end to use I know I write with my left but I do everything else with my right so I it balances ours our very being you know to engage in the both re creative and creative endeavors this sense of struggling with nerves was that there from your earliest days and earliest performances not when I was a child I didn't I I didn't experience it at all but as I got older and got responsible and realized what I was doing I was recreating these masterpieces of minds some of the greatest minds that ever walked the face of the earth what a responsibility that's when I started to get stage fright mm-hmm with only one exception everyone we've spoken to has had this as a major do this struck me did they do what usually musicians are ashamed of it and and everybody feels oh they're stage fright is much more severe than anyone elses you know and of course it's not true so you speak about it with your friends well I didn't have any friends to speak about it with but I tried to handle it I even tried to eat the right foods of the day of the performance then it's something really crazy was going on you know you searched all kinds of solutions to to ease it so I knew the head of the the Steinway until Department in the basement of Steinway and he told me her which was coming down to choose the piano and he said I'm gonna leave the door open a little bit and you can observe what is going on so there came vladimir horowitz with his wife she was pretty much of a monster like her like her father skin and he was a monster you know that's what I heard yeah so here's hardwoods playing and she's feeding him chocolate so I said to myself that's the answer sure you have to eat your food before you play so the next performance I downed some bars of chocolate promptly got sugar shock I was more nervous than I was ever and then I read a violinist Mora but no I forgot her name she she she sweated from nerves before a performance so she rubbed egg white into her hands I said that's the answer so I took egg white in the jar to a concert hall once and in the greenroom I rubbed the egg white into my end and it was terribly sticky and I went out and I played [Music] the Box Busoni check on and there was an omelet on the keyboard and I started to get stuck into the egg white it was a nightmare so that piece lasted for 15 minutes right I had to go backstage and the stagehand came out with a washcloth and had to wash the keyboard look here nothing helps stage fright except two things preparation and performing experience nothing else else in my opinion do you feel that stage fright can be influenced by our relationship with ourselves and being at peace with ourselves of course you and I discussed this so then you can go into psychotherapy you could get psychological help right now this brings up a very important subject and and I have to quote Ethan Hawke about this because he and I you know how we met we met over dinner and he actually confessed to crippling stage fright when he as well since I wrote a lot about it and suffered myself I was able to help him a lot I let him know that he shouldn't be ashamed of it it's a sign of responsibility and I also told him a story about Michael Rabin if he was a famous violinist you know he died in this thirties he's one of America's great violinists ethan hawke when when he told me that he suffers crippling stage fright I said to him what form does it take isn't it a good question oh he said I have a feeling I'm going to stop talking you know that's like we're going to have a memory slip I wonder what the next note is train wreck we don't know what the next note is so I remembered this story that Michael rabens accompanist told me I knew him Michael Rabin suddenly had a phobia that he was going to drop his bow and it started to adversely affect his performances so one night he arranged with his accompanist Mitchell Andrew that at this point in the piece he was on purpose gonna let go of his bow which he did the audience froze and Michael picked up his bow and started to play the piece from the beginning and he said to himself my goodness I'm alive and he got over his phobia so I told this to Ethan and a few months later he said I had a memory slip on the stage and I let out a blood-curdling scream and then I went on with the with the the dialog and at the end of the performance everybody thought this scream was part of the show and he got over his phobia he did it on purpose he acted out the very thing that he was most afraid of would there be an equivalent for a pianist well let's say you could unpair piss have a memory slip and take your hands off the piano and said say something to the oh and he's actually I saw this in action you know Mitch's Lafourche office key yes now picture this he's 90 years old he's my age right and he's playing the last three sonatas of Beethoven he comes [Music] it stops sure makes another go at it [Music] it's any codes like this and the audience just loses it everybody left oh maybe a full minute then he started again and he went through it I guess these these little expressive devices I don't think he did that on purpose he just forgot he had a memory slip so you've been giving some performances these days how does that feel getting back to it after all the years of not doing it I'll tell you one of the virtues of being my age being a knight this is something that you can look forward to when you get older you stop playing games and you stop saying what people expect you to say and you start saying the truth right you want me to tell you the truth I play better than I ever did that's the truth I never played as well as I play now and it gives me enormous pleasure how did you come to teaching oh well when I was around 14 and 15 I was fortunate I lived in Newark with my parents and there was a woman by the name of Clara hustle she studied with let it ski when she was 17 picture this now so I was very fortunate to become her pupil and she just adored me and so she had me practice with her pupils to get them to prepare for her their lessons properly so I started to teach when I was 15 then eventually I had my own pupils at 15 so I've been teaching all of my life I adored teaching you know what I love best about teaching I love the feeling of making a pupil feel good about themselves you know they can play a certain passage and I practice with them and get them to play that passage and they are elated they can't believe that they're actually able to do it and I get 10 times more reward from their pleasure and that's one of the great things about teaching you make people better what we were speaking about earlier about the education of a Bach or a Beethoven or a Schubert yeah why isn't there another Beethoven or Bach today do you think you have a theory about what was different for them in terms of their training or was it just simply the circumstances of the world around it that before the 1900s it was unthinkable for anyone to take piano lessons who didn't compose it went and and and you know when Bach wrote his two and three part inventions it's all in the preface I wrote these pieces to train you to write in two and three parts everybody was composing it's not required now but I I know where the Bach and Beethoven czar today shall I tell you where they are they're walking across the major concert halls of the of the world one of them is a potential Beethoven and both they're never going to do it Kissin kissing this one of them you know I read somewhere that when he got sick he would go to bed and compose so I know the Sony people they invited me to their box to hear a kiss and also penned recital and then we all went back to see Kissin he was standing against a wall and I went up to him and I said mister Kissin I don't have to tell you your playing is transcendental it moves everybody beyond words oh thank you is that do you know what you must do know what you must never give another recital unless you include some of your own pieces you have your another list you have to be like list do you know what he said I can't just like turned green I can't I said what do you mean you can't you have to do that you have to you have to keep alive the sacred art of music like listen I can't you could just tell he wanted to but it's it's too late something is keeping him from doing this now has so many recitals to give such responsibilities right there's no time left to do its anymore do you encourage your students to compose I don't get anywhere occasionally one way I would say if I have 20 pupils one will do it they play a Mozart concerto there's no cadenza right a cadenza I don't I can't they freak out one of them will do it mm-hm what is it like for you to choose a student oh well we choose each other I don't believe that I should judge the student and that the student has nothing to say about it so I agree that the students should be auditioning me and I should be auditioning the student and we I work with them and then I tell them now you'd wait three days and then you call me you tell me would you like to continue and then and I'll tell you the truth to whether I think we should continue or not and sometimes I feel that I can't get through to the pupil so I suggest that they go to another teacher and sometimes the the pupil doesn't even call doesn't come back i frightened them away for some reason in your piano lessons yes are your remarks limited to music or do you also try to teach your students about life directly or is that just implicitly through the music for example I'm gonna give you an example a live experience and we're teaching a woman who is very exuberant personally kind of extrovert personality she plays the piano completely introverted I keep reminding her when I'm trying to get her to be openly expressive I say it'd be like you are as a person look how you are you're so forthcoming you're so exuberant I love to talk with you you should be playing like that you know open up your emotional world in your performing career as a pianist which you had a very established career which was well received and well reviewed and then at some point you stopped if one of your students came to you at that point and said they wanted to stop what would you tell them I would have to figure out what age they were if they were going to say that to me and then I would ask them and why do you wish to stop you have to have a good reason for stopping are you if you're going to replace something so vital like that that can actually lead toward the integration of your personality as I believe again then it has to be replaced with something that's as vital as that and if they were faced with crippling stage fright what would you tell them well you just learned how to get over it like I did mm-hmm it's nuts you're not so special if you're to telling me you right mm-hmm I just I can't face the audience anymore you're not so special your fears aren't so special everybody suffers that so you want to be a coward and give up are you able to play well in spite of your nervousness and you say no it's ruining my performance we'll find out why it's ruining your performance don't miss out on that opportunity to overcome a challenge because then you can really learn to love yourself and regard yourself if you can walk across the stage and play the way you would like to play that's a conquest a human conquest that's what I would tell the pupil then the rest is up to them and this conquest of the challenge do you feel you've achieved that I think so over been personal in you personally are you confessed I did it was only when I was able to play well in spite of my nerves I can feel it right now on the stage of the 92nd Street Y I'm the only one who knew this is my last recital right I start with the my own transcription of the organ Toccata and Fugue in d-minor I got to that point I said every note that I play is coming closer to my liberation then I heard myself just playing very beautifully they said you know you've achieved something you can now call it to a ball are you still learning new music at this stage in your life new record well I have to do because my pupils keep playing and sometimes they're playing something you know I really don't know everything that's been written in case you don't know that so I sometimes I have to practice and I love to practice and I love to read through music so I keep going at 90 I don't intend to stop besides which my doctor told me he read the my blood tests you know all the numbers see more of all my patients you have the best numbers you're gonna live to a hundred and twenty but I'm very worried about you Gary why are you worried about me you're not gonna have a doctor seem where you've recounted a story on the 92nd Street Y as being terrifying do you also have a memory of a performance that was unexpectedly blissful the one I gave for Ethan hooks theater group and you were how old at that point three years ago hmm and what did that feel like why was that well that was particularly amazing to me because look here look here Ethan is about to make the documentary and he has a meeting with me right in the same apartment by the way where I met him we're sitting up a set a dining room table he's sitting there with his wife now Seymour I'm gonna ask you a question and you don't have to say yes you know I'm a member of a theatre group and we don't know very much about classical music I know you haven't given a recital in 37 years but would you consider giving a short recital and talk about the music for my theater group you see that white umbrella I turned the ash and said oh my god he's asking me to go back to the life that I gave up that's about first impression you know all of this went like seconds it seemed like forever what is he asking me to do this for I know why he's gonna concentrate on my teaching in the documentary and he's afraid that the audience is gonna hold forth to the old stupid adage those who can do and those who can't teach and he doesn't want me to go that route so if the audience sees me play they won't think I'm a coward that I really actually stuck with it so I heard myself say all right I'll do it so what what did I do the meeting ended and I went home and I grabbed I knew all the repertoire that I was going to do immediately and I started to practice eight hours a day like I was gonna give my New York debut how do you get over not playing in public for 37 years you tell me if you don't practice eight hours a day you're not gonna survive okay there why don't you ask me how it went how did now it's the day of the concert you know where the concert was in the rotunda of Steinway we filmed there in fact I chose this unbelievable piano almost as beautiful as the one I'm gonna own this one and he said don't come at 7:30 cuz they're gonna set up cameras and everything his theater group will these famous actors and actresses were there so I my friend picked me up in a taxi and you know the rotunda of Steinway looks on 57th Street and there's a picture window in front of the piano you can just look through the picture window and I saw the piano is enveloped in a sunlight their lights they're putting microphones inside the piano in the balcony I freaked out I absolutely freaked out I said well you know it's enough to give a recital after 37 years but to film it for posterity I'm gonna die I'll just have a heart attack and I'll die so I said all right I'll go into Steinway all died there what better place to end so I walked and you know how musicians are they're dying inside hello how are you and yes he smiled and inside nobody knows at all that you're dying inside so and now Ethan the movie starts and I'm sitting on an armchair you know I'm the on the arm of an armchair and he's I I'm gonna see more hasn't played for 37 years you know what it says in the documentary he can wait a couple of more minutes but I want to tell you how I met him it's up and I'm dying there all of a sudden in the middle of his talking a calm came over me went like this all the all the anxiety went out of my head why what is this all about I believe I couldn't believe it now it's time I'm going to the piano I'm gonna play a recital deathly calm where did that come from I'm gonna tell you in a minute that that recital is over I can't believe it unsliced mind you know splicing did you hear the recital and the DVD isn't it good I know I told you I playing better so Ethan and I walk on 57th Street arm-in-arm toward the Russian Tea Room he was gonna take me to the resident D room the cameras following us conquering heroes he was scared to death I wasn't gonna succeed you know was dangerous of him to do that so now the next day I said no how is this possible here I think I'm gonna die one minute and I'm successful the next and I said I know why I did that I was not gonna leave Ethan down I realize when you do something for someone else it temporarily distracts you from your own vulnerability that's what it does you do it for someone else the ego ceases to exist you're not important Ethan is important now I'm not gonna let him down that's what did it I didn't realize that that was happening but that's the only explanation that I can give can you give another explanation of course I was prepared but that I don't think that would only account for it I could play well in spite of my nerves right so Seymour a hundred years from now when we're all gone or you might be around I don't intend to be gone yes but what do you want you to do when you're gone yes well it sort of negates my question how would you like to be remembered as a pianist as a teacher as a person and I wanted I want to be remembered for all the everything that I'm trying to project now and that is in terms of human relationships because that's what life is all about where we're relating to other people we want to give the best of ourselves to other people and make them feel good about themselves that's what I want to be remembered about doing see more thank you so much for being on our show it's been such a delight and a truly moving experience to hear your life stories and your wisdom and I hope that we'll meet again soon off camera or on thank you so much so thank you so much is it all over it's all over [Music] you

Channel: Living the Classical Life

Views: 110,717

Keywords: seymour bernstein, ethan hawke, living the classical life, zsolt bognar, piano, classical music, interview

Id: 6YW4o5RhGY4

Length: 37min 47sec (2267 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 20 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/NadaDjordjevich]

Thank you for sharing. I loved this and the documentary. What a joyful way to start my Sunday.