Let Ethan Hawke Introduce You To A Fine, Forgotten Pianist — npr.org

Ethan Hawke might strike you as an unlikely guide to classical music. But in directing his first documentary, Seymour: An Introduction, he created an intriguing and ultimately profoundly moving tribute to a largely unknown artist, 86-year-old pianist Seymour Bernstein. A student of Clifford Curzon, Nadia Boulanger and Georges Enescu, Bernstein seemed in the 1950s and '60s to be a serious star ascendant. A 1954 New York Times preview mentioned him as a rising virtuoso in the same sentence as Leon Fleisher, Earl Wild and Jacob Lateiner. In a review written in 1969 — the same year that Bernstein made his solo debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra — Times critic Donal Henahan raved about both his technical accomplishment and intelligent interpretation: "If his recital ... was not merely one of those freakishly great days that good pianists sometimes enjoy, Seymour Bernstein is ready to break out into a wider circle of attention."

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