Meryl Streep fiddles around in ‘Music of the Heart’

Valerie Kuklenski

Monday, Nov. 1, 1999 | 9:38 a.m.

LOS ANGELES -- Everybody knows Meryl Streep can do accents, but it's a safe bet (without asking her) that she doesn't sit at home in Connecticut conversing with her husband and four kids with British, Danish, German, Irish, Australian or even Oklahoman inflections.

But recently the two-time Oscar winner picked up a very different skill for a film role -- playing violin for "Music of the Heart" -- and although the shoot is long behind her, she's still practicing the instrument.

"It's hard, because I live pretty far out of New York," Streep said. "I found a teacher for the summer and then she was at the Tanglewood (Music Festival), but she went back to the BSO (Boston Symphony Orchestra). I'm looking for another person to keep me current.

"I'm going by the book now. I'm sight-reading," she added with a touch of self-satisfaction in her voice.

In the true story, Streep plays Roberta Guaspari, a Navy wife abandoned by her husband. Guaspari, a violinist with scant teaching experience, is desperate for work, so she takes on the challenge of teaching streetwise Harlem children to play the very genteel instrument.

Streep initially declined the role because she feared she wouldn't have enough preparation time.

"Then Wes (Craven) wrote me a really wonderful letter -- unlike anything I'd ever gotten from a director -- just basically putting his heart on his sleeve about what he felt about the project, about being a teacher and coming to this material after a long time doing other sorts of things and how much it meant to him," she said. "And, oh man, it was just everything you want to hear from a director. The passion is in place. It meant so much to him to follow it through, and he wanted me.

"I begged for some more time, because I don't play an instrument and I didn't know to what extent I could fake it," Streep said. "I imagined they would digitally realize my fingers, but it turns out they couldn't do that, so they gave me an extra four weeks. I had a couple of months before we started shooting."

That's eight weeks to learn not just "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and other beginner's tunes, but the intricate Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins by Johann Sebastian Bach (a k a "the Bach Double") as well. And she couldn't merely play the violin; she had to handle it with authority and extreme confidence, always in the character of the gutsy woman she was playing and sometimes while delivering lines. (She once told Craven it's like patting your head, rubbing your stomach and doing the tango all at once.)

A violinist with the New York Philharmonic gave her private instruction last year while Streep traveled to publicize "One True Thing" and "Dancing at Lughnasa."

"It was intense, and my neck hurt all the time, but other than that I have no complaints," she said. "This is what I had to do to play a violin teacher, but I'm not a great violinist.

"I sure loved her story. And I didn't want to do her dishonor not to really pay respect to this instrument she loves and she teaches such respect for in her classes. I looked at it as preparation for the role."

Toward the end of the film Roberta finds herself organizing a fund-raiser, Fiddlefest, in which she and her students would play historic Carnegie Hall with Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman, Arnold Steinhardt and other amazing musicians.

Streep struggled to find the words to describe how that concert scene felt for her, and at the same time, tried not to describe it.

"That was a thrill," she said. "It really was one of the great moments of my life, and so I don't want to blab about it all the time. It's like showing the video of your wedding 50 times in a row, and suddenly you feel like, I don't remember what it was like to be at my wedding. I don't want the memory to be robbed from me.

"It was magic," she said, then abruptly broke her wistful mood and laughed, "but I'm not going to tell you about it!"

Shortly before the concert Roberta goes to Carnegie Hall to familiarize herself with the backstage area and the legendary stage.

In that scene, Stern approaches Roberta and bids her welcome to one of the world's most prestigious concert halls, saying the spirits of such musicians as Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Vladimir Horowitz and Jascha Heifetz welcome her, too.

"It did give me goose bumps. It made the hair stand up on my arms when (Stern) first did it," Streep added. "I look at Carnegie Hall in a very romantic way. I was born in New Jersey and came into New York and that was the temple of musical art."

The concert scene was pressure of one kind, but working with truly gifted children, some of them actual Guaspari students, was another matter.

"As nervous as I was for Carnegie Hall, I was much more nervous the first day I had to play for the 6-year-old group," she said. "I was just beside myself with nerves. I played really, really badly.

"This was the first week of rehearsals. My fingers were wiggling with fear. You don't have vibrato in the bow hand. I had vibrato in the bow hand. They were laughing -- they loved that I sucked at it," Streep recalled with amusement.

"I got very good very quickly and that made them mad. They said, 'You're skipping books. You're supposed to go to Book 3. You went right from (Book) 2 to 5. That's not fair,' " she said, mimicking a childish whine.

She said in a matter of a few days they were treating her as their teacher, awarding her the respect due a person of authority. "They were so sweet. I really got why people love to teach, because kids give you so much love, and it's an amazing responsibility."

Streep began acting in high school theater, mentored by her music teacher, Claire Callahan. Now the 50-year-old actress -- mother of three daughters ages 8, 13 and 16 and a son who is 19, and the wife of sculptor Don Gummer -- is a passionate advocate for the arts in schools.

"There's no question that the arts in public and private education are the poor sisters," she said.

"I think the worth of a culture is measured in its legacies, in its art, what it leaves the world. I think we need more poets, artists, musicians, not less. How are we going to fill up all that software? We'll have lots of people who can write (computer) programs, but nobody's going to know what to put in them."