When he wasn’t playing contrabassoon in the New York Philharmonic, Bert Bial was snapping pictures as the orchestra’s de facto official photographer, making him a witness to numerous remarkable moments in a career that stretched over four decades. During a rare trip behind the Iron Curtain, in Moscow in 1959, he was on hand with his camera as Leonard Bernstein welcomed the composer Dmitri Shostakovich to the stage after the Philharmonic had performed his Fifth Symphony. And Mr. Bial (pronounced Beal) was there on that tour when Mr. Bernstein had a visitor in his dressing room — Boris Pasternak, author of “Doctor Zhivago,” who had not appeared publicly since he was awarded the Nobel Prize the year before. Twenty years later, Mr. Bial caught Diane Keaton and Woody Allen chatting with the conductor Zubin Mehta at Avery Fisher Hall, where the orchestra was recording music for Mr. Allen’s film “Manhattan.”

Source: New York Times June 09, 2020 22:41 UTC