Conductors

Grade: B When a music-lover is tired of Haydn’s London symphonies, they’re tired of life. It’s not just the sheer creative verve of these 12 symphonies by a composer in his sixties. It’s the generosity of spirit. Beethoven demands a battle of wills; Mozart a near-impossible grace. But a conductor can run straight at a London symphony and Haydn will show us, with a smile, exactly who they are. Beecham is urbane, Bernstein camps it up; Abbado is trim and impeccably turned out. Eugen Jochum (a belated discovery) is just very, very German. Haydn’s still bigger than all of them. Paavo Jarvi has reached the second volume of his London

As the overture to Candide blazed away during the ovation for Maestro at the Venice Film Festival, three members of the audience flung their arms around in an imitation of Leonard Bernstein’s conducting style. They were his children, Jamie, Alexander and Nina, and their reaction said it all. Bradley Cooper, the film’s star and director, had pulled off a piece of cinematic chutzpah worthy of Lenny himself. His secret? The last quality you associate with the most embarrassingly flamboyant genius in American musical history: understatement. It’s easy to imagine the ghastly three-hour biopic Cooper didn’t make. West Side Story goes from near-catastrophe to wild triumph. Children all over America are