Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein was born on 25 August 1918 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in the United States. His parents, Samuel and Jennie, were Jewish immigrants from Ukraine; his father ran a beauty-supply business. As a child Leonard was often ill and shy. At ten an aunt left an old piano at their home: it was a revelation. He threw himself into it passionately, took lessons despite his father’s opposition — he wanted him to take over the family business — and quickly became a remarkable pianist.

In 1935 he entered Harvard University, studying music and philosophy. There he met the conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos and the composer Aaron Copland, who became his friend and mentor. After Harvard he studied conducting at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia with Fritz Reiner, then from 1940 at the Tanglewood music centre with the famous conductor Serge Koussevitzky, who regarded him as his spiritual son. In 1943 he became assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic.

On 14 November 1943 the conductor Bruno Walter fell ill and could not conduct the Sunday concert, broadcast live on radio across the country. Bernstein, aged twenty-five, was called that very morning to replace him, without any rehearsal. The concert was a triumph, and the New York Times reported it on its front page the next day: he became famous overnight. He went on to conduct the world’s greatest orchestras and became one of the first American conductors of international renown.

Bernstein was also a prolific composer who moved easily between classical music and Broadway. In 1944 he composed the ballet Fancy Free, about three sailors on shore leave in New York, which became the musical On the Town. He also wrote symphonies, such as Symphony No. 1, “Jeremiah” (1942), and Symphony No. 2, “The Age of Anxiety” (1949), and the operetta Candide (1956), after Voltaire, whose sparkling overture is very often played in concert.

In 1957 he premiered West Side Story on Broadway, with the choreographer Jerome Robbins and the lyricist Stephen Sondheim. It is a modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet set in the poor districts of New York, where two rival gangs, the Jets and the Sharks, clash. Its music, blending jazz, Latin American rhythms and symphonic writing, with songs such as Maria, Tonight and America, was a worldwide success, reinforced by the 1961 film, which won ten Oscars.

In 1958 he became the first American-born and American-trained music director of the New York Philharmonic, a post he held until 1969. A passionate teacher, from 1958 to 1972 he presented the televised Young People’s Concerts, explaining music to children with humour and enthusiasm. Millions of families watched them. He also composed the Chichester Psalms (1965), in Hebrew, and Mass (1971), a theatrical work for the opening of the Kennedy Center in Washington.

Committed to peace, civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam War, Bernstein often used his fame for humanitarian causes. On 25 December 1989, a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Berlin with musicians from both Germanys and the Allied countries, replacing the word “Freude” (joy) with “Freiheit” (freedom). Exhausted and ill, he gave his last concert at Tanglewood in August 1990 and died in New York on 14 October 1990.