| When The New Yorker published its two-part Profile of Leonard Bernstein, early in 1958, the composer was basking in the success of his latest Broadway musical, a recently opened production called “West Side Story.” In the world of publishing, however, Bernstein’s reputation glowed a bit less brightly: he had missed the deadline for a book with Simon & Schuster, the magazine reported, by nearly ten years. Reading the Profile, it’s easy to understand why. In addition to composing for theatre and writing books, Bernstein was a concert pianist, a music instructor, a TV fixture, and a husband and father known to nearly everyone as Lenny. Most famously, of course, he was a conductor, a figure whose interpretive style and physicality generated both acclaim and disdain. (In the new movie “Maestro,” released today on Netflix, the actor Bradley Cooper, playing Bernstein, athletically reënacts one of the composer’s most ecstatic performances on the podium.) “His technique of communicating with an orchestra involves the hands, the arms, the shoulders, the pelvis, and the knees, to say nothing of the forehead, the eyes, and the teeth,” The New Yorker’s Robert Rice observed. “Until last week’s Philharmonic concerts he had rarely, if ever, been known to use a baton.” | 
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