Maestro

Leonard Bernstein was an outstanding 20th century American composer and conductor, who led the New York Philharmonic for decades and co-wrote “West Side Story.” We’ll glimpse his personal life in the new biopic film Maestro, but the new teaser trailer keeps its cards close to its chest. Starring, written and directed by Bradley Cooper (building on the success of his 2018 musical film A Star is Born, which co-starred Lady Gaga), Maestro is co-produced by cinema heavyweights Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.

While the film itself will, naturally, feature mainly music by Bernstein, this teaser is cut to music by one of Bernstein’s heroes, Austrian composer Gustav Mahler. Like Bernstein, Mahler was a conductor and a composer, and served also, towards the end of his life, as the conductor of the New York Philharmonic (1909-1911). This trailer, which is 1:20 in length, uses for its soundtrack the last 12 bars of the popular “Adagietto” from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, one of Bernstein’s favourite pieces of music.

Like film and video, all trailers will typically feature three sound elements: dialogue, sound effects and music. Music was Bernstein’s life, and the Adagietto takes centre stage sonically in this trailer. In fact, other than the sounds of birdsong in the first three seconds of the trailer to set the scene in a park, there are no sound effects to accompany this trailer. For instance, there is enthusiastic applause shown visually on screen at 0:38, and all we hear is the Adagietto. We see Bernstein and his lover with others talking and laughing at a party at 0:44, but all we hear is the Adagietto.

The only dialogue heard in this trailer is made up of two conversations between Bernstein and his wife Felicia. These two conversations, both involving a numbers game played on the grass in a park in summer, are nearly identical except one takes place when the couple is young and the other takes place several decades later.

This film is about an American icon who was gayin an era before LGBTQ rights were secured. If you only listened to the trailer, and did not watch the visual clips unfolding behind the Adagietto and the voiceover, you’d expect you were listening to an uplifting heterosexual love story. But there is more here than meets the eye (ear).

The trailer features several moments with clever synching of visuals and music. As the violins soar to a high A at 0:30, a door is opened on screen and a backstage passageway starts to fill with light. Seconds later at 0:37 Bernstein’s conducting hand gesture aligns powerfully with the downbeat at the end of the crescendo leading into the final phrase of the Adagietto.

As the trailer’s credits roll, the final cadence of the Adagietto resolves to an F major chord with the violin landing on an A. As a harmonically bridging outro, the Netflix title card at 1:20 also has an A in the upper voice (one octave up), with a D in the bass this time, giving a pleasing D major chord that fits smoothly as a branded sonic bow to wrap up this trailer.

Maestro arrives on Netflix December 20th, in time for the holidays.

— Jack Hui Litster