Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein
1977 photograph by Jack Mitchell
Born	Louis Bernstein (1918-08-25)August 25, 1918 Lawrence, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	October 14, 1990(1990-10-14) (aged 72) Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
Resting place	Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York City, U.S.
Alma mater	Harvard University (A.B.)
Occupation	Conductor composer pianist lecturer author
Works	List of compositions
Spouse(s)	Felicia Montealegre ​ ​ (m. 1951; died 1978)​
Children	3
Awards	Full list
Signature

Leonard Bernstein (/ˈbɜːrnstaɪn/ BURN-styne;^[1] August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Among the most important conductors of his time, he was also the first American conductor to receive international acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history".^[2] Bernstein was the recipient of many honors, including seven Emmy Awards,^[3] two Tony Awards,^[4] sixteen Grammy Awards,^[5] including the Lifetime Achievement, and the Kennedy Center Honor.^[6]

As a composer he wrote in many styles, including symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and works for the piano. His best-known work is the Broadway musical West Side Story, which continues to be regularly performed worldwide, and has been adapted into two (1961 and 2021) feature films. His works include three symphonies, Chichester Psalms, Serenade after Plato's "Symposium", the original score for the film On the Waterfront, and theater works including On the Town, Wonderful Town, Candide, and his MASS.

Bernstein was the first American-born conductor to lead a major American symphony orchestra.^[7] He was music director of the New York Philharmonic and conducted the world's major orchestras, generating a significant legacy of audio and video recordings.^[8] He was also a critical figure in the modern revival of the music of Gustav Mahler, in whose music he was most passionately interested.^[9] A skilled pianist,^[10] he often conducted piano concertos from the keyboard. He was the first conductor to share and explore music on television with a mass audience. Through dozens of national and international broadcasts, including the Emmy Award–winning Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, he made even the most rigorous elements of classical music an adventure in which everyone could join. Through his educational efforts, including several books and the creation of two major international music festivals, he influenced several generations of young musicians.

A lifelong humanitarian, Bernstein worked in support of civil rights;^[11] protested against the Vietnam War;^[12] advocated for nuclear disarmament; raised money for HIV/AIDS research and awareness; and engaged in multiple international initiatives for human rights and world peace. Near the end of his life, he conducted a historic performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. The concert was televised live, worldwide, on Christmas Day, 1989.^[13]

Early life and education[]

1918–1934: Early life and family[]

Born Louis Bernstein in Lawrence, Massachusetts, he was the son of Ukrainian-Jewish parents, Jennie (née Resnick) and Samuel Joseph Bernstein, both of whom immigrated to the United States from Rovno (now Ukraine).^[14][15][16] His grandmother insisted that his first name be Louis, but his parents always called him Leonard. He legally changed his name to Leonard when he was eighteen, shortly after his grandmother's death.^[17] To his friends and many others he was simply known as "Lenny".^[18]

His father was the owner of The Samuel Bernstein Hair and Beauty Supply Company. It held the New England franchise for the Frederick's Permanent Wave Machine, whose immense popularity helped Sam get his family through The Great Depression.^[19]

In Leonard's early youth, his only exposure to music was the household radio and music on Friday nights at Congregation Mishkan Tefila in Roxbury, Massachusetts. When Leonard was ten years old, Samuel's sister Clara deposited her upright piano at her brother's house. Bernstein began teaching himself piano and music theory and was soon clamoring for lessons. He had a variety of piano teachers in his youth, including Helen Coates, who later became his secretary. In the summers, the Bernstein family would go to their vacation home in Sharon, Massachusetts, where young Leonard conscripted all the neighborhood children to put on shows ranging from Bizet's Carmen to Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance. He would often play entire operas or Beethoven symphonies with his younger sister Shirley.^{[citation needed]}

Leonard's youngest sibling Burton was born in 1932, thirteen years after Leonard.^[20] Despite the large span in age, the three siblings remained close their entire lives.

Sam was initially opposed to young Leonard's interest in music and attempted to discourage his son's interest by refusing to pay for his piano lessons. Leonard then took to giving lessons to young people in his neighborhood. One of his students, Sid Ramin, became Bernstein's most frequent orchestrator and lifelong beloved friend.

Sam took his son to orchestral concerts in his teenage years and eventually supported his music education. In May 1932, Leonard attended his first orchestral concert with the Boston Pops Orchestra conducted by Arthur Fiedler. Bernstein recalled, “To me, in those days, the Pops was heaven itself ... I thought ... it was the supreme achievement of the human race.”^[21] It was at this concert that Bernstein first heard Ravel's Boléro, which made a tremendous impression on him.^[22]

Another strong musical influence was George Gershwin. Bernstein was a counselor at a summer camp when news came over the radio of Gershwin's death. In the mess hall, a shaken Bernstein demanded a moment of silence, and then played Gershwin's second Prelude as a memorial.

On March 30, 1932, Bernstein played Brahms's Rhapsody in G Minor at his first public piano performance in Susan Williams's studio recital at the New England Conservatory. Two years later, he made his solo debut with orchestra in Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor with the Boston Public School Orchestra.

1935–1940: College years[]

Bernstein's first two education environments were both public schools: the William Lloyd Garrison School, followed by the prestigious Boston Latin School,^[23] for which Bernstein and classmate Lawrence F. Ebb wrote the Class Song.^[24]

Harvard University[]

In 1935, Bernstein enrolled at Harvard University, where he studied music with, among others, Edward Burlingame Hill and Walter Piston. His first extant composition, Psalm 148 set for voice and piano, is dated in 1935. He majored in music with a final year thesis titled "The Absorption of Race Elements into American Music" (1939; reproduced in his book Findings). One of Bernstein's intellectual influences at Harvard was the aesthetics Professor David Prall, whose multidisciplinary outlook on the arts inspired Bernstein for the rest of his life.

One of his friends at Harvard was future philosopher Donald Davidson, with whom Bernstein played piano duets. Bernstein wrote and conducted the musical score for the production Davidson mounted of Aristophanes' play The Birds, performed in the original Greek. Bernstein recycled some of this music in future works.

While a student, he was briefly an accompanist for the Harvard Glee Club as well as an unpaid pianist for Harvard Film Society's silent film presentations.^[25]

Bernstein mounted a student production of The Cradle Will Rock, directing its action from the piano as the composer Marc Blitzstein had done at the infamous premiere. Blitzstein, who attended the performance, subsequently became a close friend and mentor to Bernstein.^[26]

As a sophomore at Harvard, Bernstein met the conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos. Mitropoulos's charisma and power as a musician were major influences on Bernstein's eventual decision to become a conductor.^[27] Mitropoulos invited Bernstein to come to Minneapolis for the 1940–41 season to be his assistant, but the plan fell through due to union issues.^[28]

Bernstein met Aaron Copland on the latter's birthday in 1937; the elder composer was sitting next to Bernstein at a dance recital at Town Hall in New York City. Copland invited Bernstein to his birthday party afterwards, where Bernstein impressed the guests by playing Copland's challenging Piano Variations, a work Bernstein loved. Although he was never a formal student of Copland's, Bernstein would regularly seek his advice, often citing him as his "only real composition teacher".^[29]

Bernstein graduated from Harvard in 1939 with a Bachelor of Arts cum laude.

Curtis Institute of Music[]

After graduating from Harvard, Bernstein enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. At Curtis, Bernstein studied conducting with Fritz Reiner (who anecdotally is said to have given Bernstein the only "A" grade he ever awarded); piano with Isabelle Vengerova; orchestration with Randall Thompson; counterpoint with Richard Stöhr; and score reading with Renée Longy Miquelle.^[30]

In 1940, Bernstein attended the inaugural year of the Tanglewood Music Center (then called the Berkshire Music Center) at the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home.^[31] Bernstein studied conducting with the BSO's music director, Serge Koussevitzky, who became a profound lifelong inspiration to Bernstein.^[32] He became Koussevitzky's conducting assistant at Tanglewood^[33] and later dedicated his Symphony No. 2: The Age of Anxiety to his beloved mentor.^[34] One of Bernstein's classmates, both at Curtis and at Tanglewood, was Lukas Foss, who remained a lifelong friend and colleague. Bernstein returned to Tanglewood nearly every summer for the rest of his life to teach and conduct the young music students.

Life and career[]

The 1940s[]

Soon after he left Curtis, Bernstein moved to New York City where he lived in various apartments in Manhattan. Bernstein supported himself by coaching singers and playing the piano for dance classes in Carnegie Hall. He found work with Harms-Witmark, transcribing jazz and pop music and publishing his work under the pseudonym “Lenny Amber.” (Bernstein means "Amber" in German.)^[35]

On April 21, 1942, Bernstein performed the premiere of his first published work, Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, with clarinetist David Glazer at the Institute of Modern Art in Boston.

Bernstein briefly shared an apartment in Greenwich Village with his friend Adolph Green. Green was part of a comedy troupe called The Revuers, featuring Betty Comden and Judy Holliday, who often performed at the legendary jazz club the Village Vanguard.

New York Philharmonic conducting debut[]

On November 14, 1943, having recently been appointed assistant conductor to Artur Rodziński of the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein made his major conducting debut at short notice—and without any rehearsal—after guest conductor Bruno Walter came down with the flu.^[36] The challenging program included works by Robert Schumann, Miklós Rózsa, Richard Wagner, and Richard Strauss.

The next day, The New York Times carried the story on its front page and remarked in an editorial, "It's a good American success story. The warm, friendly triumph of it filled Carnegie Hall and spread far over the air waves."

Many newspapers throughout the country carried the story, which, in combination with the concert's live national CBS Radio Network broadcast, propelled Bernstein to instant fame.^[37]

Over the next two years, Bernstein made conducting debuts with ten different orchestras in the United States and Canada, greatly broadening his repertoire and initiating a lifelong frequent practice of conducting concertos from the piano.^[38]

Symphony No. 1: Jeremiah, Fancy Free, and On the Town[]

On January 28, 1944, he conducted the premiere of his Symphony No. 1: Jeremiah with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra with Jennie Tourel as soloist.

In the fall of 1943, Bernstein and Jerome Robbins began work on their first collaboration, Fancy Free, a ballet about three young sailors on leave in wartime New York City. Fancy Free premiered on April 18, 1944, with the Ballet Theatre (now the American Ballet Theatre) at the old Metropolitan Opera House, with scenery by Oliver Smith and costumes by Kermit Love.^[39]

Bernstein and Robbins decided to expand the ballet into a musical and invited Comden and Green to write the book and lyrics. On the Town opened on Broadway's Adelphi Theatre on December 28, 1944. The show resonated with audiences during World War II, and it broke race barriers on Broadway: Japanese-American dancer Sono Osato in a leading role; a multiracial cast dancing as mixed race couples; and a Black concertmaster, Everett Lee, who eventually took over as music director of the show.^[40] On the Town became an MGM motion picture in 1949, starring Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin as the three sailors. Only part of Bernstein's score was used in the film and additional songs were provided by Roger Edens.^[41]

Rising conducting career[]

From 1945 to 1947, Bernstein was the music director of the New York City Symphony, which had been founded the previous year by the conductor Leopold Stokowski. The orchestra (with support from Mayor Fiorello La Guardia) had modern programs and affordable tickets.^[42]

In 1946, he made his overseas debut with the Czech Philharmonic in Prague. He also recorded Ravel's Piano Concerto in G as soloist and conductor with the Philharmonia Orchestra. On July 4, 1946, Bernstein conducted the European premiere of Fancy Free with the Ballet Theatre at the Royal Opera House in London.

In 1946, he conducted opera professionally for the first time at Tanglewood with the American premiere of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes, which was commissioned by Koussevitzky. That same year, Arturo Toscanini invited Bernstein to guest conduct two concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, one of which also featured Bernstein as soloist in Ravel's Piano Concerto in G.^[43]

Israel Philharmonic Orchestra[]

In 1947, Bernstein conducted in Tel Aviv for the first time, beginning a lifelong association with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, then known as the Palestine Symphony Orchestra. The next year he conducted an open-air concert for Israeli troops at Beersheba in the middle of the desert during the Arab-Israeli war. In 1957, he conducted the inaugural concert of the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv. In 1967, he conducted a concert on Mount Scopus to commemorate the Reunification of Jerusalem, featuring Mahler's Symphony No. 2 and Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with soloist Isaac Stern. During the 1970s, Bernstein recorded his symphonies and other works with the Israel Philharmonic on Deutsche Grammophon. The city of Tel Aviv added his name to the Orchestra Plaza in the center of the city.^{[citation needed]}

First television appearance[]

On December 10, 1949, he made his first television appearance as conductor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. The concert, which also included an address by Eleanor Roosevelt, celebrated the one-year anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly's ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and included the premiere of Aaron Copland's "Preamble" with Sir Laurence Olivier narrating text from the UN Charter. The concert was televised by NBC Television Network.^[44]

Summer at Tanglewood[]

In April 1949, Bernstein performed as piano soloist in the world premiere of his Symphony No. 2: The Age of Anxiety with Koussevitzy conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Later that year, Bernstein conducted the world premiere of the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Olivier Messiaen, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Part of the rehearsal for the concert was recorded and released by the orchestra. When Koussevitzky died in 1951, Bernstein became head of the orchestra and conducting departments at Tanglewood.

The 1950s[]

The 1950s comprised among the most fertile years of Bernstein's career. He harnessed the power of television to expand his educational reach; he created five new works for the Broadway stage; he composed several symphonic works and an iconic film score; he toured the world with numerous orchestras including concerts behind the Iron Curtain; and he married and started a family.

Educational activities[]

In addition to Bernstein's continuing teaching activities in the summers at Tanglewood, he was a visiting music professor from 1951 to 1956 at Brandeis University.^[45] In 1952, he created the Brandeis Festival of the Creative Arts, where he conducted the premiere of his chamber opera, Trouble in Tahiti. The festival was renamed in 2005, becoming the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts.^[46]

On November 14, 1954, Bernstein presented the first of his television lectures for the CBS Television Network arts program Omnibus. The live lecture, entitled "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony", involved Bernstein explaining the symphony's first movement with the aid of musicians from the "Symphony of the Air" (formerly NBC Symphony Orchestra). The program featured manuscripts from Beethoven's own hand, as well as a giant painting of the first page of the score covering the studio floor. Six more Omnibus lectures followed from 1955 to 1961 (later on ABC and then NBC) covering a broad range of topics: jazz, conducting, American musical comedy, modern music, J.S. Bach, and grand opera.

Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic[]

Bernstein's television teaching took a quantum leap when, as the new music director of the New York Philharmonic, he put the orchestra's traditional Saturday afternoon Young People's Concerts on the CBS Television Network. Millions of viewers of all ages and around the world enthusiastically embraced Bernstein and his engaging presentations about classical music. Bernstein often presented talented young performers on the broadcasts. Many of them became celebrated in their own right, including conductors Claudio Abbado and Seiji Ozawa; flutist Paula Robison; and pianist André Watts. From 1958–1972, the fifty-three Young People's Concerts comprised the most influential series of music education programs ever produced on television.^[47] They were highly acclaimed by critics and won numerous Emmy Awards.^[48]

Some of Bernstein's scripts, all of which he wrote himself, were released in book form and on records.^[49] A recording of Humor in Music was awarded a Grammy award for Best Documentary or Spoken Word Recording (other than comedy) in 1961.^[50] The programs were shown in many countries around the world, often with Bernstein dubbed into other languages, and the concerts were later released on home video by Kultur Video.

Theatrical works in the 1950s[]

Peter Pan[]

In 1950, Bernstein composed incidental music for a Broadway production of J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan.^[51] The production, which opened on Broadway on April 24, 1950, starred Jean Arthur as Peter Pan and Boris Karloff in the dual roles of George Darling and Captain Hook. The show ran for 321 performances.^[52]

Trouble in Tahiti[]

In 1951, Bernstein composed Trouble in Tahiti, a one-act opera in seven scenes with an English libretto by the composer. The opera portrays the troubled marriage of a couple whose idyllic suburban post-war environment belies their inner turmoil.^[53] Ironically, Bernstein wrote most of the opera while on his honeymoon in Mexico with his wife, Felicia Montealegre.

Trouble in Tahiti premiered at the Brandeis's Festival of the Creative Arts on June 12, 1952. The NBC Opera Theatre subsequently presented the opera on television in November 1952. Three decades later, Bernstein wrote a second opera, A Quiet Place, which picked up the story and characters of Trouble in Tahiti in a later period.

Wonderful Town[]

In 1953, Bernstein wrote the score for the musical Wonderful Town on very short notice, with a book by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The musical tells the story of two sisters from Ohio who move to New York City and seek success from their squalid basement apartment in Greenwich Village.

Wonderful Town opened on Broadway on February 25, 1953 at the Winter Garden Theatre, starring Rosalind Russell in the role of Ruth Sherwood, Edie Adams as Eileen Sherwood, and George Gaynes as Robert Baker. It won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Actress.^[54]

Candide[]

In the three years leading up to Bernstein's appointment as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein was simultaneously working on the scores for two Broadway shows. The first of the two was the operetta-style musical Candide. Lillian Hellman originally brought Bernstein her idea of adapting Voltaire's novella.^[55] The original collaborators on the show were book writer John Latouche and lyricist Richard Wilbur.

Candide opened on Broadway on December 1, 1956 at the Martin Beck Theatre, in a production directed by Tyrone Guthrie. Anxious about the parallels Hellman had deliberately drawn between Voltaire's story and the ongoing hearings conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Guthrie persuaded the collaborators to cut their most incendiary sections prior to opening night.^[56]

While the production was a box office disaster, running only two months for a total of 73 performances,^[57] the cast album became a cult classic, which kept Bernstein's score alive. The elements of the music that have remained best known and performed over the decades are the Overture, which quickly became one of the most frequently performed orchestral compositions by a 20th century American composer; the coloratura aria "Glitter and Be Gay", which Barbara Cook sang in the original production; and the grand finale "Make Our Garden Grow".

West Side Story[]

The other musical Bernstein was writing simultaneously with Candide was West Side Story. Bernstein collaborated with director and choreographer Jerome Robbins, book writer Arthur Laurents, and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. ^[58]

The story is an updated retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, set in the mid-1950s in the slums of New York City's Upper West Side. The Romeo character, Tony, is affiliated with the Jets gang, who are of white Northern European descent. The Juliet character is Maria, who is connected to the Sharks gang, recently arrived immigrants from Puerto Rico. ^[59]

The original Broadway production opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on September 26, 1957, and ran 732 performances. Robbins won the Tony Award for Best Choreographer, and Oliver Smith won the Tony for Best Scenic Designer.^[60]

Bernstein's score for West Side Story blends "jazz, Latin rhythms, symphonic sweep and musical-comedy conventions in groundbreaking ways for Broadway".^[61] It was orchestrated by Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal following detailed instructions from Bernstein. The dark theme, sophisticated music, extended dance scenes, and focus on social problems marked a turning point in musical theatre.

In 1960, Bernstein prepared a suite of orchestral music from the show, titled Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story," which continues to be popular with orchestras worldwide.^[62]

A 1961 United Artists film adaptation, directed by Robert Wise and starred Natalie Wood as Maria, and Richard Beymer as Tony. The film won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture and a ground-breaking Best Supporting Actress award for Puerto Rican-born Rita Moreno playing the role of Anita.^[63]

A new film adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg opened in theaters on December 10, 2021.^[64]

Charles Ives[]

Throughout his career, Bernstein often talked about the music of Charles Ives, who died in 1954. In 1951, Bernstein conducted the New York Philharmonic in the world premiere of Ives' Symphony No. 2, which was written around half a century earlier. The composer, old and frail, was unable (some reports say unwilling) to attend the concert, but his wife did. Ives reportedly listened to a broadcast of it on a radio in his kitchen some days later.

First American to conduct at La Scala[]

In 1953 he was the first American conductor to appear at La Scala in Milan, conducting Maria Callas in Cherubini's Medea directed by Luchino Visconti. This opera had been virtually abandoned by performers, and he learned it in a week.^{[citation needed]} It was to prove a fruitful collaboration, and Callas and Bernstein went on to perform in Bellini's La sonnambula in 1955.

Music director of the New York Philharmonic[]

Bernstein was named the music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1957, replacing Dimitri Mitropoulos. He began his tenure in that position in 1958, having held the post jointly with Mitropoulos from 1957 to 1958. In 1958, Bernstein and Mitropoulos took the New York Philharmonic on tour to South America. In his first season in sole charge, Bernstein included a season-long survey of American classical music.^[65] Themed programming of this sort was fairly novel at that time compared to the present day. Bernstein held the music directorship until 1969 (with a sabbatical in 1965) although he continued to conduct and make recordings with the orchestra for the rest of his life and was appointed "laureate conductor".

New York Philharmonic U.S. State Department tour[]

In 1959, he took the New York Philharmonic on a tour of Europe and the Soviet Union, portions of which were filmed by CBS Television. A highlight of the tour was Bernstein's performance of Dmitri Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, in the presence of the composer, who came on stage at the end to congratulate Bernstein and the musicians. In October, when Bernstein and the orchestra returned to the U.S., they recorded the symphony for Columbia. He recorded it for a second time with the orchestra on tour in Japan in 1979. Bernstein seems to have limited himself to only conducting certain Shostakovich symphonies, namely the numbers 1, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 14. He made two recordings of Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony (No. 7), one with the New York Philharmonic in the 1960s and another recorded live in 1988 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (one of the few recordings he made with them, also including the Symphony No. 1).

1960s[]

Advocating for composers[]

In 1960 Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic held a Mahler Festival to mark the centenary of the composer's birth. Bernstein, Walter and Mitropoulos conducted performances. The composer's widow, Alma, attended some of Bernstein's rehearsals. In 1960 Bernstein also made his first commercial recording of a Mahler symphony (the Fourth) and over the next seven years he made the first complete cycle of recordings of all nine of Mahler's completed symphonies. (All featured the New York Philharmonic except the 8th Symphony which was recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra following a concert in the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1966.) The success of these recordings, along with Bernstein's concert performances and television talks, was an important, if not vital, part of the revival of interest in Mahler in the 1960s, especially in the U.S. Bernstein claimed that he identified with the works on a personal level, and once said of the composer: [He] showered a rain of beauty on this world that has not been equaled since.^[66]

Other non-U.S. composers that Bernstein championed to some extent at the time include the Danish composer Carl Nielsen (who was then only little known in the U.S.) and Jean Sibelius, whose popularity had by then started to fade. Bernstein eventually recorded a complete cycle in New York of Sibelius's symphonies and three of Nielsen's symphonies (Nos. 2, 4, and 5), as well as conducting recordings of his violin, clarinet and flute concertos. He also recorded Nielsen's 3rd Symphony with the Royal Danish Orchestra after a critically acclaimed public performance in Denmark.

Bernstein championed American composers, especially those that he was close to like Aaron Copland, William Schuman and David Diamond. For Columbia Records, he also started to record his own compositions more extensively. This included his three symphonies, his ballets, and the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story with the New York Philharmonic. He also conducted an LP of his 1944 musical On the Town, the first (almost) complete recording of the original featuring several members of the original Broadway cast, including Betty Comden and Adolph Green. (The 1949 film version only contains four of Bernstein's original numbers.) Bernstein also collaborated with the experimental jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck resulting in the recording Bernstein Plays Brubeck Plays Bernstein (1961).

Glenn Gould[]

In one oft-reported incident, in April 1962 Bernstein appeared on stage before a performance of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor with the pianist Glenn Gould. During rehearsals, Gould had argued for tempi much broader than normal, which did not reflect Bernstein's concept of the music. Bernstein gave a brief address to the audience starting with "Don't be frightened; Mr Gould is here..." and going on to "'In a concerto, who is the boss (audience laughter)—the soloist or the conductor?' (Audience laughter grows louder). The answer is, of course, sometimes the one and sometimes the other, depending on the people involved."^[67] This speech was subsequently interpreted by Harold C. Schonberg, music critic for The New York Times, as abdication of personal responsibility and an attack on Gould, whose performance Schonberg went on to criticize heavily. Bernstein always denied that this had been his intent and has stated that he made these remarks with Gould's blessing.^[68] In the book Dinner with Lenny, published in October 2013, author Jonathan Cott provided a thorough debunking, in the conductor's own words, of the legend which Bernstein himself described in the book as "one ... that won't go away".^{[citation needed]}

Throughout his life, he professed admiration and friendship for Gould. Schonberg was often (though not always) harshly critical of Bernstein as a conductor during his tenure as music director. However, his views were not shared by the audiences (with many full houses) and probably not by the musicians themselves (who had greater financial security arising from Bernstein's many TV and recording activities amongst other things).

Opening Lincoln Center[]

In 1962 the New York Philharmonic moved from Carnegie Hall to Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen Hall) in the new Lincoln Center. The move was not without controversy because of acoustic problems with the new hall. Bernstein conducted the gala opening concert featuring vocal works by Mahler, Beethoven and Vaughan Williams, and the premiere of Aaron Copland's Connotations, a serial-work that was merely politely received. During the intermission Bernstein kissed the cheek of the President's wife Jacqueline Kennedy, a break with protocol that was commented on at the time.

The Kennedys[]

In 1961 Bernstein had conducted at President John F. Kennedy's pre-inaugural gala, and he was an occasional guest in the White House. Years later he conducted at the funeral mass in 1968 for President Kennedy's brother Robert F. Kennedy, featuring the Adagietto from Mahler's 5th Symphony. Jackie Kennedy famously wrote to Bernstein after the event: When your Mahler started to fill (but that is the wrong word — because it was more this sensitive trembling) the Cathedral today — I thought it the most beautiful music I had ever heard.^[69]

On November 23, 1963, the day after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Bernstein conducted the New York Philharmonic and the Schola Cantorum of New York in a nationally televised memorial featuring the "Resurrection Symphony" by Gustav Mahler. This was the first televised performance of the complete symphony. Mahler's music had never been performed for such an event, and since the tribute to JFK, Mahler symphonies have become part of the Philharmonic's standard repertoire for national mourning.^[70]

Metropolitan Opera and Vienna State Opera debuts[]

In 1964 Bernstein conducted Franco Zeffirelli's production of Verdi's Falstaff at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

In 1966 he made his debut at the Vienna State Opera conducting Luchino Visconti's production of the same opera with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Falstaff. During his time in Vienna he also recorded the opera for Columbia Records and conducted his first subscription concert with the Vienna Philharmonic (which is made up of players from the Vienna State Opera) featuring Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde with Fischer-Dieskau and James King. He returned to the State Opera in 1968 for a production of Der Rosenkavalier and in 1970 for Otto Schenk's production of Beethoven's Fidelio.

Sixteen years later, at the State Opera, Bernstein conducted his sequel to Trouble in Tahiti, A Quiet Place, with the ORF orchestra. Bernstein's final farewell to the State Opera happened accidentally in 1989: following a performance of Modest Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina, he unexpectedly entered the stage and embraced conductor Claudio Abbado in front of a cheering audience.

Kaddish and Chichester Psalms[]

With his commitment to the New York Philharmonic and his many other activities, Bernstein had little time for composition during the 1960s. The two major works he produced at this time were his Kaddish Symphony, dedicated to the recently assassinated President John F. Kennedy, and the Chichester Psalms, which he produced during a sabbatical year he took from the Philharmonic in 1965 to concentrate on composition. Wanting to make more time for composition was probably a major factor in his decision to step down as music director of the Philharmonic in 1969, and to never again accept such a position elsewhere.

International conductor[]

After stepping down from the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein continued to appear with them in most years until his death, and he toured with them to Europe in 1976 and to Asia in 1979. He also strengthened his relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic—he conducted all nine completed Mahler symphonies with them (plus the Adagio from the 10th) in the period from 1967 to 1976. All of these were filmed for Unitel with the exception of the 1967 Mahler 2nd, which instead Bernstein filmed with the London Symphony Orchestra in Ely Cathedral in 1973. In the late 1970s Bernstein conducted a complete Beethoven symphony cycle with the Vienna Philharmonic, and cycles of Brahms and Schumann were to follow in the 1980s. Other orchestras he conducted on numerous occasions in the 1970s include the Israel Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de France, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

In 1970 Bernstein wrote and narrated a ninety-minute program filmed on location in and around Vienna as a celebration of Beethoven's 200th birthday. It featured parts of Bernstein's rehearsals and performance for the Otto Schenk production of Fidelio, Bernstein playing the 1st piano concerto and conducting the Ninth Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic, with the young Plácido Domingo amongst the soloists. The program was first telecast in 1970 on Austrian and British television, and then on CBS in the U.S. on Christmas Eve 1971. The show, originally entitled Beethoven's Birthday: A Celebration in Vienna, won an Emmy and was issued on DVD in 2005. In the summer of 1970, during the Festival of London, he conducted Verdi's Requiem Mass in St. Paul's Cathedral, with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Early 1970s[]

Bernstein's major compositions during the 1970s were his Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers; his score for the ballet Dybbuk; his orchestral vocal work Songfest; and his U.S. bicentenary musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue written with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner which was his first real theatrical flop, and last original Broadway show.

Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers[]

In 1966, Jacqueline Kennedy commissioned Bernstein to compose a work for the inauguration of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Bernstein began writing Mass in 1969 as a large-scale theatrical work based on the Tridentine Mass of the Catholic Church, and in 1971, Bernstein invited the young composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz, who had recently opened the musical Godspell off-Broadway, to collaborate as co-lyricist. The world premiere of took place on September 8, 1971, conducted by Maurice Peress and choreographed by Alvin Ailey.^[71]

Bernstein’s score combines elements of musical theater, jazz, gospel, folk, rock, and symphonic music, and the libretto combines Latin and English liturgy, Hebrew prayer, and additional lyrics written by Bernstein and Schwartz.^[72]

Mass was originally criticized by both the Catholic Church and those who opposed its anti-Vietnam War message, as well as by some music critics.^[73] Viewpoints on Mass continue to evolve over time, and Edward Seckerson wrote in 2021, 50 years after its premiere: "Put simply, no other work of Bernstein’s encapsulates exactly who he was as a man or as a musician; no other work display’s his genius, his intellect, his musical virtuosity and innate theatricality quite like MASS.”^[74]

Deutsche Grammophon recordings[]

In 1972, Bernstein recorded Bizet's Carmen, with Marilyn Horne in the title role and James McCracken as Don Jose, after leading several stage performances of the opera at the Metropolitan Opera. The recording was one of the first in stereo to use the original spoken dialogue between the sung portions of the opera, rather than the musical recitatives that were composed by Ernest Guiraud after Bizet's death. The recording was Bernstein's first for Deutsche Grammophon and won a Grammy.

Norton Lectures at Harvard[]

Bernstein was appointed in 1973 to the Charles Eliot Norton Chair as Professor of Poetry at his alma mater, Harvard University, and delivered a series of six televised lectures on music with musical examples played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. However, these lectures were not televised until 1976. Taking the title from a Charles Ives work, he called the series The Unanswered Question; it was a set of interdisciplinary lectures in which he borrowed terminology from contemporary linguistics to analyze and compare musical construction to language. The lectures are presently available in both book and DVD form. The DVD video was not taken directly from the lectures at Harvard, rather they were recreated again at the WGBH studios for filming. This appears to be the only surviving Norton lectures series available to the general public in video format. Noam Chomsky wrote in 2007 on the Znet forums about the linguistic aspects of the lecture: "I spent some time with Bernstein during the preparation and performance of the lectures. My feeling was that he was onto something, but I couldn't really judge how significant it was."

Rostropovich[]

Bernstein played an instrumental role in the release of renowned cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich from the USSR in 1974. Rostropovich, a strong believer in free speech and democracy, had been officially held in disgrace; his concerts and tours both at home and abroad cancelled, and in 1972 he was prohibited to travel outside of the Soviet Union. During a trip to the USSR in 1974, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy and his wife Joan, urged by Bernstein and others in the cultural sphere, mentioned Rostropovich's situation to Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Union Communist Party Leader. Two days later, Rostropovich was granted his exit visa.^[75][76]

SNL[]

Chevy Chase stated in his biography that Lorne Michaels wanted Bernstein to host Saturday Night Live in the show's first season (1975–76). Chase was seated next to Bernstein at a birthday party for Kurt Vonnegut and made the request in person. However, the pitch involved a Bernstein-conducted SNL version of West Side Story, and Bernstein was uninterested.^[77]

Felicia Montealegre Bernstein Fund of Amnesty International USA[]

In October 1976, Bernstein led the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and pianist Claudio Arrau in an Amnesty International Benefit Concert in Munich. To honor his late wife and to continue their joint support for human rights, Bernstein established the Felicia Montealegre Bernstein Fund of Amnesty International USA to provide aid for human rights activists with limited resources.^[78]

Late 1970s[]

In 1978, Bernstein returned to the Vienna State Opera to conduct a revival of the Otto Schenk production of Fidelio, now featuring Gundula Janowitz and René Kollo in the lead roles. At the same time, Bernstein made a studio recording of the opera for Deutsche Grammophon and the opera itself was filmed by Unitel and released on DVD by Deutsche Grammophon in late 2006. In May 1978, the Israel Philharmonic played two U.S. concerts under his direction to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Orchestra under that name. On consecutive nights, the Orchestra, with the Choral Arts Society of Washington, performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Bernstein's Chichester Psalms at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and at Carnegie Hall in New York.

In 1979, Bernstein conducted the Berlin Philharmonic for the first time, in two charity concerts for Amnesty International involving performances of Mahler's Ninth Symphony. The invitation for the concerts had come from the orchestra and not from its principal conductor Herbert von Karajan. There has been speculation about why Karajan never invited Bernstein to conduct his orchestra. (Karajan did conduct the New York Philharmonic during Bernstein's tenure.) The full reasons will probably never be known—reports suggest they were on friendly terms when they met, but sometimes practiced a little mutual one-upmanship.^[79] One of the concerts was broadcast on radio and was posthumously released on CD by Deutsche Grammophon. One oddity of the recording is that the trombone section fails to enter at the climax of the finale, as a result of an audience member fainting just behind the trombones a few seconds earlier.

Early 1980s[]

Bernstein received the Kennedy Center Honors award in 1980. For the rest of the 1980s he continued to conduct, teach, compose, and produce the occasional TV documentary. His most significant compositions of the decade were probably his opera A Quiet Place, which he wrote with Stephen Wadsworth and which premiered, in its original version, in Houston in 1983; his Divertimento for Orchestra; his Ḥalil for flute and orchestra; his Concerto for Orchestra "Jubilee Games"; and his song cycle Arias and Barcarolles, which was named after a comment President Dwight D. Eisenhower had made to him in 1960.

International fame[]

In 1982 in the U.S., PBS aired an 11-part series of Bernstein's late 1970s films for Unitel of the Vienna Philharmonic playing all nine Beethoven symphonies and various other Beethoven works. Bernstein gave spoken introduction and actor Maximilian Schell was also featured on the programs, reading from Beethoven's letters.^[80] The original films have since been released on DVD by Deutsche Grammophon. In addition to conducting in New York, Vienna and Israel, Bernstein was a regular guest conductor of other orchestras in the 1980s. These included the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, with whom he recorded Mahler's First, Fourth, and Ninth Symphonies amongst other works; the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich, with whom he recorded Wagner's Tristan und Isolde; Haydn's Creation; Mozart's Requiem and Great Mass in C minor; and the orchestra of Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, with whom he recorded some Debussy and Puccini's La bohème.

In 1982, he and Ernest Fleischmann founded the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute as a summer training academy along the lines of Tanglewood. Bernstein served as artistic director and taught conducting there until 1984. Around the same time, he performed and recorded some of his own works with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon. Bernstein was also at the time a committed supporter of nuclear disarmament. In 1985 he took the European Community Youth Orchestra in a "Journey for Peace" tour across Europe and Japan.

In 1984, he conducted a recording of West Side Story, the first time he had conducted the entire work. The recording, featuring what some critics^[who?] felt were miscast opera singers such as Kiri Te Kanawa, José Carreras, and Tatiana Troyanos in the leading roles, was nevertheless an international bestseller. A TV documentary The Making of West Side Story about the recording was made at the same time and has been released as a DVD. Bernstein also continued to make his own TV documentaries during the 1980s, including The Little Drummer Boy, in which he discussed the music of Gustav Mahler, perhaps the composer he was most passionately interested in, and The Love of Three Orchestras, in which he discussed his work in New York, Vienna, and Israel.

In his later years, Bernstein's life and work were celebrated around the world (as they have been since his death). The Israel Philharmonic celebrated his involvement with them at festivals in Israel and Austria in 1977. In 1986 the London Symphony Orchestra mounted a Bernstein Festival in London with one concert that Bernstein himself conducted attended by the Queen. In 1988 Bernstein's 70th birthday was celebrated by a lavish televised gala at Tanglewood featuring many performers who had worked with him over the years.

During summer 1987, he celebrated the 100th anniversary of Nadia Boulanger at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau. He gave a masterclass inside the castle of Fontainebleau.^[81]

In December 1989, Bernstein conducted live performances and recorded in the studio his operetta Candide with the London Symphony Orchestra. The recording starred Jerry Hadley, June Anderson, Adolph Green, and Christa Ludwig in the leading roles. The use of opera singers in some roles perhaps fitted the style of operetta better than some critics had thought was the case for West Side Story, and the posthumously released recording was universally praised. One of the live concerts from the Barbican Centre in London is available on DVD. Candide had had a troubled history, with many rewrites and writers involved. Bernstein's concert and recording were based on a final version that had been first performed by Scottish Opera in 1988. The opening night, which Bernstein attended in Glasgow, was conducted by his former student John Mauceri.

Ode to "Freedom"[]

On December 25, 1989, Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in East Berlin's Schauspielhaus as part of a celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. He had conducted the same work in West Berlin the previous day. The concert was broadcast live in more than twenty countries to an estimated audience of 100 million people. For the occasion, Bernstein reworded Friedrich Schiller's text of the Ode to Joy, using the word Freiheit (freedom) instead of the original Freude (joy).^[82] Bernstein, in his spoken introduction, said that they had "taken the liberty" of doing this because of a "most likely phony" story, apparently believed in some quarters, that Schiller wrote an "Ode to Freedom" that is now presumed lost. Bernstein added, "I'm sure that Beethoven would have given us his blessing."

Founding of Pacific Music Festival[]

In the summer of 1990, Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas founded the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan. Like his earlier activity in Los Angeles, this was a summer training school for musicians modeled on Tanglewood and is still in existence. At this time, Bernstein was already suffering from the lung disease that would lead to his death. In his opening address Bernstein said that he had decided to devote what time he had left to education. A video showing Bernstein speaking and rehearsing at the first Festival is available on DVD in Japan.

In the same year, Bernstein received the Praemium Imperiale, an international prize awarded by the Japan Arts Association for lifetime achievement in the arts. Bernstein used the $100,000 prize to establish The Bernstein Education Through the Arts (BETA) Fund, Inc.^[83] He provided this grant to develop an arts-based education program. The Leonard Bernstein Center was established in April 1992, and initiated extensive school-based research, resulting in the Bernstein Model, the Leonard Bernstein Artful Learning Program.^[84]

Last concert[]

Bernstein conducted his last concert on August 19, 1990, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood. The program consisted of Benjamin Britten's Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7.^[85] He suffered a coughing fit during the third movement of the Beethoven symphony, but continued to conduct the piece until its conclusion, leaving the stage during the ovation, appearing exhausted and in pain.^[86] The concert was later issued in edited form on CD as Leonard Bernstein – The Final Concert by Deutsche Grammophon.^[87] Also included was Bernstein's own Arias and Barcarolles in an orchestration by Bright Sheng. However, poor health prevented Bernstein from performing it. Carl St. Clair was engaged to conduct it in his stead.^[88]

Personal life[]

After much personal struggle and a turbulent on-off engagement, Bernstein married actress Felicia Cohn Montealegre on September 10, 1951. One suggestion is that he chose to marry partly to dispel rumors about his private life to help secure a major conducting appointment, following advice from his mentor Dimitri Mitropoulos about the conservative nature of orchestra boards.^[79] In a book released in October 2013, The Leonard Bernstein Letters, his wife acknowledges his homosexuality. Felicia writes: "You are a homosexual and may never change—you don't admit to the possibility of a double life, but if your peace of mind, your health, your whole nervous system depend on a certain sexual pattern what can you do?" Arthur Laurents (Bernstein's collaborator in West Side Story) said that Bernstein was "a gay man who got married. He wasn't conflicted about it at all. He was just gay."^[89] Shirley Rhoades Perle, another friend of Bernstein, said that she thought "he required men sexually and women emotionally".^[90] But the early years of his marriage seem to have been happy, and no one has suggested Bernstein and his wife did not love each other. They had three children, Jamie, Alexander, and Nina.^[91] There are reports, though, that Bernstein did sometimes have brief extramarital liaisons with young men, which several family friends have said his wife knew about.^[90]

A major period of upheaval in Bernstein's personal life began in 1976 when he decided that he could no longer conceal his homosexuality and he left his wife Felicia for a period to live with the musical director of the classical music radio station KKHI in San Francisco, Tom Cothran.^[92] The next year Felicia was diagnosed with lung cancer and eventually Bernstein moved back in with her and cared for her until she died on June 16, 1978.^[79] Bernstein is reported to have often spoken of his terrible guilt over his wife's death.^[79] Most biographies of Bernstein state that his lifestyle became more excessive and his personal behavior sometimes more reckless and crude after her death. However, his public standing and many of his close friendships appear to have remained unaffected, and he resumed his busy schedule of musical activity.

His affairs with men included a ten-year relationship with Kunihiko Hashimoto, a Tokyo insurance employee. The two met when the New York Philharmonic was performing in Tokyo. Hashimoto went backstage and they ended up spending the night together. It was a long distance affair, but according to letters, they both cared about each other deeply. Dearest Lenny: Letters from Japan and the Making of the World Maestro by Mari Yoshihara (Oxford University Press, 2019) goes into detail about their letters and relationship including interviews with Hashimoto. The book also includes other letters Bernstein received from Japanese fans.^[93]

Bernstein had asthma, which kept him from serving in the military during World War II.^[94]

Death and legacy[]

Bernstein announced his retirement from conducting on October 9, 1990^[95] and died five days later, in his New York apartment at The Dakota, of a heart attack brought on by mesothelioma.^[96] He was 72 years old.^[2] A longtime heavy smoker, he had had emphysema from his mid-50s. On the day of his funeral procession through the streets of Manhattan, construction workers removed their hats and waved, calling out "Goodbye, Lenny".^[97] Bernstein is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York,^[98] next to his wife and with a copy of Mahler's Fifth Symphony opened to the famous Adagietto lying across his heart.^[99] On August 25, 2018 (his 100th birthday), he was honored with a Google Doodle.^[100] Also for his centennial, the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles created an exhibition titled Leonard Bernstein at 100.^{[101][102] [103]}

Social activism[]

While Bernstein was very well known for his music compositions and conducting, he was also known for his outspoken political views and his strong desire to further social change. His first aspirations for social change were made apparent in his producing (as a student) a recently banned opera, The Cradle Will Rock, by Marc Blitzstein, about the disparity between the working and upper class. His first opera, Trouble in Tahiti, was dedicated to Blitzstein and has a strong social theme, criticizing American civilization and suburban upper-class life in particular. As he went on in his career, Bernstein would go on to fight for everything from the influences of "American Music" to the disarming of western nuclear weapons.^[104]

Like many of his friends and colleagues, Bernstein had been involved in various left-wing causes and organizations since the 1940s. He was blacklisted by the US State Department and CBS in the early 1950s, but unlike others his career was not greatly affected, and he was never required to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.^[105] His political life received substantial press coverage though in 1970, due to a gathering hosted at his Manhattan apartment at 895 Park Avenue^[106] on January 14, 1970. Bernstein and his wife held the event seeking to raise awareness and money for the defense of several members of the Black Panther Party against a variety of charges, especially the case of the Panther 21.^[107] The New York Times initially covered the gathering as a lifestyle item, but later posted an editorial harshly unfavorable to Bernstein following generally negative reaction to the widely publicized story.^[108][109] This reaction culminated in June 1970 with the appearance of "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's", an essay by journalist Tom Wolfe featured on the cover of the magazine New York.^[110] The article contrasted the Bernsteins' comfortable lifestyle in one of the world's most expensive neighborhoods with the anti-establishment politics of the Black Panthers. It led to the popularization of "radical chic" as a critical term.^[111] Both Bernstein and his wife Felicia responded to the criticism, arguing that they were motivated not by a shallow desire to express fashionable sympathy but by their concern for civil liberties.^[112][113]

Bernstein was named in the book Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television (1950) as a Communist along with Aaron Copland, Lena Horne, Pete Seeger, Artie Shaw and other prominent figures of the performing arts. Red Channels was issued by the right-wing journal Counterattack and was edited by Vincent Hartnett, who was later found to have libeled and defamed the noted radio personality John Henry Faulk.^{[114][115][116]}

Philanthropy[]

Among the many awards Bernstein earned throughout his life, one allowed him to make one of his philanthropic dreams a reality. He had for a long time wanted to develop an international school to help promote the integration of arts into education. When he won the Praemium Imperiale, Japan Arts Association award for lifetime achievement in 1990,^[117] he used the $100,000 that came with the award to build such a school in Nashville, that would strive to teach teachers how to better integrate music, dance, and theater into the school system which was "not working".^[118] Unfortunately, the school was not able to open until shortly after Bernstein's death. This would eventually yield an initiative known as Artful Learning as part of the Leonard Bernstein Center.^[119][120]

Influence and characteristics as a conductor[]

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Bernstein was one of the major figures in orchestral conducting in the second half of the 20th century. He was held in high regard amongst many musicians, including the members of the Vienna Philharmonic, evidenced by his honorary membership; the London Symphony Orchestra, of which he was president; and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, with which he appeared regularly as guest conductor. He was probably the main conductor from the 1960s onwards who acquired a sort of superstar status similar to that of Herbert von Karajan, although unlike Karajan he conducted relatively little opera and part of Bernstein's fame was based on his role as a composer. As the first American-born music director of the New York Philharmonic, his rise to prominence was a factor in overcoming the perception of the time that the top conductors were necessarily trained in Europe.

Bernstein's conducting was characterized by extremes of emotion with the rhythmic pulse of the music conveyed visually through his balletic podium manner. Musicians often reported that his manner in rehearsal was the same as in concert. As he got older his performances tended to be overlaid to a greater extent with a personal expressiveness which often divided critical opinion. Extreme examples of this style can be found in his Deutsche Grammophon recordings of "Nimrod" from Elgar's Enigma Variations (1982), the end of Mahler's 9th Symphony (1985), and the finale of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony (1986), where in each case the tempos are well below those typically chosen. A skilled pianist, he used to perform the piano parts himself and conduct orchestras from the keyboard (for instance, when he conducted Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue).

Bernstein performed a wide repertoire from the Baroque era to the 20th century, although perhaps from the 1970s onwards he tended to focus more on music from the Romantic era. He was considered especially accomplished with the works of Gustav Mahler and with American composers in general, including George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, Roy Harris, William Schuman, and of course himself. Some of his recordings of works by these composers would likely appear on many music critics' lists of recommended recordings. A list of his other well-thought-of recordings would include, among others, individual works from Haydn, Beethoven, Berlioz, Schumann, Liszt, Nielsen, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Hindemith, and Shostakovich.^[121] His recordings of Rhapsody in Blue (full-orchestra version) and An American in Paris for Columbia Records, released in 1959, are considered definitive by many, although Bernstein cut the Rhapsody slightly, and his more 'symphonic' approach with slower tempi is quite far from Gershwin's own conception of the piece, evident from his two recordings. (Oscar Levant, Earl Wild, and others come closer to Gershwin's own style.) Bernstein never conducted Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F, or more than a few excerpts from Porgy and Bess, although he did discuss the latter in his article Why Don't You Run Upstairs and Write a Nice Gershwin Tune?, originally published in The New York Times and later reprinted in his 1959 book The Joy of Music.

In addition to being an active conductor, Bernstein was an influential teacher of conducting. During his many years of teaching at Tanglewood and elsewhere, he directly taught or mentored many conductors who are performing now, including John Mauceri, Marin Alsop, Herbert Blomstedt, Edo de Waart, Alexander Frey, Paavo Järvi, Eiji Oue, Maurice Peress, Seiji Ozawa (who made his American TV debut as the guest conductor on one of the Young People's Concerts), Carl St.Clair, Helmuth Rilling, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Jaap van Zweden. He also undoubtedly influenced the career choices of many American musicians who grew up watching his television programmes in the 1950s and 60s.

Recordings[]

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Bernstein recorded extensively from the mid-1940s until just a few months before his death. Aside from those 1940s recordings, which were made for RCA Victor, Bernstein recorded primarily for Columbia Masterworks Records, especially when he was music director of the New York Philharmonic between 1958 and 1971. His typical pattern of recording at that time was to record major works in the studio immediately after they were presented in the orchestra's subscription concerts or on one of the Young People's Concerts, with any spare time used to record short orchestral showpieces and similar works. Many of these performances were digitally remastered and reissued by Sony Classical Records (the successor to American Columbia/CBS Masterworks following Sony's 1990 acquisition of Columbia/CBS Records) between 1992 and 1993 as part of its 100 volume, 125-CD "Royal Edition", as well as its 1997–2001 "Bernstein Century" series. The rights to Bernstein's 1940s RCA Victor recordings became fully owned by Sony following its 2008 acquisition of Bertelsmann Music Group's (BMG), and now controls both the RCA Victor and Columbia archives. The complete Bernstein Columbia and RCA Victor catalog was reissued on CD in a three-volume series of box sets (released in 2010, 2014, and 2018, respectively) comprising a total of 198 discs under the mantle "Leonard Bernstein Edition".

His later recordings (starting with Bizet's Carmen in 1972) were mostly made for Deutsche Grammophon, though he would occasionally return to the Columbia label. Notable exceptions include recordings of Gustav Mahler's Song of the Earth and Mozart's 15th piano concerto and "Linz" symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic for Decca Records (1966); Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique and Harold in Italy (1976) for EMI; and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (1981) for Philips Records, a label that like Deutsche Grammophon was part of PolyGram at that time. Unlike his studio recordings for Columbia Masterworks, most of his later Deutsche Grammophon recordings were taken from live concerts (or edited together from several concerts with additional sessions to correct errors). Many replicate repertoire that he recorded in the 1950s and 60s.

In addition to his audio recordings, many of Bernstein's concerts from the 1970s onwards were recorded on motion picture film by the German film company Unitel. This included a complete cycle of the Mahler symphonies (with the Vienna Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra), as well as complete cycles of the Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann symphonies recorded at the same series of concerts as the audio recordings by Deutsche Grammophon. Many of these films appeared on LaserDisc and are now on DVD.

In total Bernstein was awarded 16 Grammys for his recordings in various categories, including several for posthumously released recordings. He was also awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1985.

Influence and characteristics as a composer[]

Bernstein was an eclectic composer whose music fused elements of jazz, Jewish music, theatre music, and the work of earlier composers like Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, George Gershwin, and Marc Blitzstein. Some of his works, especially his score for West Side Story, helped bridge the gap between classical and popular music.^{[citation needed]} His music was rooted in tonality but in some works like his Kaddish Symphony and the opera A Quiet Place he mixed in 12-tone elements. Bernstein himself said his main motivation for composing was "to communicate" and that all his pieces, including his symphonies and concert works, "could in some sense be thought of as 'theatre' pieces".^[122]

According to the League of American Orchestras,^[123] he was the second most frequently performed American composer by U.S. orchestras in 2008–09 behind Copland, and he was the 16th most frequently performed composer overall by U.S. orchestras. (Some performances were probably due to the 2008 90th anniversary of his birth.) His most popular pieces were the Overture to Candide, the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, the Serenade after Plato's "Symposium" and the Three Dance Episodes from On the Town. His shows West Side Story, On the Town, Wonderful Town and Candide are regularly performed, and his symphonies and concert works are programmed from time to time by orchestras around the world. Since his death many of his works have been commercially recorded by artists other than himself. The Serenade, which has been recorded more than 10 times, is probably his most recorded work not taken from an actual theatre piece.^{[citation needed]}

Despite the fact that he was a popular success as a composer, Bernstein himself is reported to have been disillusioned that some of his more serious works were not rated more highly by critics, and that he himself had not been able to devote more time to composing because of his conducting and other activities.^[97] Professional criticism of Bernstein's music^{[by whom?]} often involves discussing the degree to which he created something new as art versus simply skillfully borrowing and fusing together elements from others.^{[citation needed]} In the late 1960s, Bernstein himself reflected that his eclecticism was in part due to his lack of lengthy periods devoted to composition, and that he was still seeking to enrich his own personal musical language in the manner of the great composers of the past, all of whom had borrowed elements from others.^[124] Perhaps the harshest criticism he received from some critics in his lifetime though was directed at works like his Kaddish Symphony, his MASS and the opera A Quiet Place, where they found the underlying message of the piece or the text as either mildly embarrassing, clichéd or offensive.^{[citation needed]} Despite this, all these pieces have been performed, discussed and reconsidered since his death.

The Chichester Psalms, and excerpts from his Third Symphony and MASS were performed for Pope John Paul II, including at World Youth Day in Denver on August 14, 1993, and at the Papal Concert to Commemorate the Shoah on April 7, 1994, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the Sala Nervi at the Vatican. Both performances were conducted by Gilbert Levine.

Although he taught conducting, Bernstein did not teach composition and left no direct legacy of students in that field.^{[citation needed]}

Bibliography[]

• Bernstein, Leonard (1993) [1982]. Findings. New York: Anchor Books. ISBN 978-0-385-42437-0.
• — (1993) [1966]. The Infinite Variety of Music. New York: Anchor Books. ISBN 978-0-385-42438-7.
• — (2004) [1959]. The Joy of Music. Pompton Plains, New Jersey: Amadeus Press. ISBN 978-1-57467-104-9.
• — (2006) [1962]. Young People's Concerts. Milwaukee; Cambridge: Amadeus Press. ISBN 978-1-57467-102-5.
• — (1976). The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-92001-5.
• — (2013). The Leonard Bernstein Letters'. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-20544-2.

Videography[]

• The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard. West Long Branch, New Jersey: Kultur Video. VHS ISBN 1-56127-570-0. DVD ISBN 0-7697-1570-2. (videotape of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures given at Harvard in 1973.)
• Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic. West Long Branch, New Jersey: Kultur Video. DVD ISBN 0-7697-1503-6.
• Bernstein on Beethoven: A Celebration in Vienna/Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1. West Long Branch, Kultur Video. DVD
• Leonard Bernstein: Omnibus – The Historic TV Broadcasts, 2010, E1 Ent.
• Bernstein: Reflections (1978), A rare personal portrait of Leonard Bernstein by Peter Rosen. Euroarts DVD
• Bernstein/Beethoven (1982), Deutsche Grammophon, DVD
• The Metropolitan Opera Centennial Gala (1983), Deutsche Grammophon, DVD 00440-073-4538
• Bernstein Conducts "West Side Story" (1985) (retitled The Making of West Side Story in re-releases) Deutsche Grammophon. DVD
• "The Rite of Spring" in Rehearsal
• Mozart's Great Mass in C minor, Exsultate, jubilate & Ave verum corpus (1990), Deutsche Grammophon. DVD 00440-073-4240
• "Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note" (1998) Documentary on his life and music. Originally aired on PBS's American Masters series. DVD

Awards[]

• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1951^[125]
• Fellow at the MacDowell 1962, 1970, 1972^[126]
• Sonning Award (Denmark), 1965
• Ditson Conductor's Award, 1958
• George Peabody Medal – Johns Hopkins University, 1980
• Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, 1987
• Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal (UK), 1987
• Edward MacDowell Medal, 1987^[127]
• Knight Grand Cross Order of Merit (Italy), 1989
• Grammy Award for Best Album for Children
• Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance
• Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance
• Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording
• Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Performance
• Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance
• Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition
• Grammy Award for Best Classical Album
• Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
• Tony Award for Best Musical
• Special Tony Award
• Japan Arts Association Lifetime Achievement Award
• Gramophone Hall of Fame entrant^[128]
• Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur, 1986

Bernstein is also a member of both the American Theater Hall of Fame,^[129] and the Television Hall of Fame.^[130] In 2015 he was inducted into the Legacy Walk.^[131]

References[]

Citations

Sources

• Burton, Humphrey (1994). Leonard Bernstein. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-17368-6. OCLC 32510075. (Doubleday edition)
• Gruen, John (1968). The Private World of Leonard Bernstein. Photographs by bt Ken Heyman. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 978-0-670-57855-9.
• Laird, Paul R. (2002). Leonard Bernstein: A Guide to Research. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-8153-3517-7.
• Peyser, Joan (1987). Bernstein, a Biography. New York: Beech Tree Books/William Morrow. ISBN 978-0-688-04918-8.
• Secrest, Meryle (1994). Leonard Bernstein A Life. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-40731-6.
• Seldes, Barry (2009). Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-25764-1.

Further reading[]

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Leonard Bernstein.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Leonard Bernstein

• Official website
• Talking About Leonard Bernstein at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television
• Leonard Bernstein at IMDb
• Leonard Bernstein at the Internet Broadway Database
• Leonard Bernstein at the Internet Off-Broadway Database

Archival records

• Leonard Bernstein collection, circa 1900–1995, Library of Congress
• Bernstein Online Collection, Library of Congress
• Mildred Spiegel Zucker collection of Leonard Bernstein correspondence and related materials, 1936–1991, Library of Congress