Is That Really Bradley Cooper Playing Piano in ‘Maestro’?

Maestro, which is now streaming on Netflix, tells the story of one the most celebrated composers of modern times: Leonard Bernstein.

Bernstein—who is played in the movie by heavily prosthetic-ized Bradley Cooper, who also directed the film—is widely known for composing the famed West Side Story music, though many in the music world know him best as a legendary conductor. He began playing piano at the age of 10, studied music at Harvard, and conducted the New York Philharmonic at the tender age of 25. You better believe that this man was really good at piano.

Though Maestro is more interested in relaying the story of Bernstein’s relationship to his wife Felicia (played by the wonderful Carey Mulligan) than it is in his music career, Cooper still includes a few scenes that showcase Bernstein’s considerable talent. That includes a scene of Cooper tinkering away on the ivory keys with actor Brian Klugman, who plays Aaron Copland, as a young Lenny performs a duet in his attic apartment. It certainly looks like Cooper is really playing the piano in the shot. The camera is deliberately positioned so that we can see his face and his hands as they fly over the keys. But you know never know what kind of tricks can be pulled off by movie magic. So was Cooper actually playing piano in Maestro?

Does Bradley Cooper Play Piano in Maestro?

Yes, Bradley Cooper does play piano in Maestro. Cooper had already taken piano lessons for his role as fictional rockstar Jackson Maine in A Star Is Born, according to a recent New York Times profile. That said, Cooper told Classic FM in an interview that he is hardly a virtuoso. “I can only learn the thing that you see,” Cooper said. “The same thing as in A Star is Born — I just learned those specific pieces because I never wanted to cut to a hand, or do some sort of face replacement.”

Cooper spent far more time learning how to conduct, spending five years as a regular at New York Philharmonic performances, rehearsals, and staff outings. He even, according to the Times, befriended a handful of real-life conductors, “including van Zweden; Michael Tilson Thomas, a protégé of Bernstein who led the San Francisco Symphony; Gustavo Dudamel, who leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the music director of the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra, who served as the film’s conducting consultant.”

Bernstein’s own son, Alexander Bernstein, was impressed by Cooper’s piano skills. In an interview for the Maestro production notes, Alexander said he loved “how Bradley’s brought pretty much all of my dad’s facets as a creator. You get rehearsal scenes, you get teaching scenes, you get a composing scene, obviously conducting scenes, and how about that piano playing! Just tremendous.”