Leonard Bernstein's Biography

Leonard Bernstein's born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on August 25, 1918, he was already composing and conducting musical shows as a schoolboy. He made his conducting debut while still a student at Harvard University and became the assistant of the great Serge Koussevitzky in Tanglewood in 1942. His sensational New York Philharmonic conducting debut occurred on November 14, 1943, when Bruno Walter fell ill and Bernstein replaced him. The concert was broadcast over radio, and the New York Times published a review on page 1 the next day. Leonard Bernstein suddenly became a household name. His association with the Philharmonic - he was the orchestra's music director from 1958 to 1969 - lasted to the end of his life.

Instant success came in 1943 when, in addition to his New York Philharmonic debut, he scored his first Broadway hit, On the Town, and won the New York Music Critics Award for his first symphony. He was the first American to conduct at La Scala in 1953, and his diva was none other than Maria Callas. His musicals Candide and West Side Story were premiered in 1956 and 1957. West Side Story went on in 1961 to become an Academy Award-winning motion picture starring Nathalie Wood, Rita Moreno and George Chakiris. Bernstein debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in 1964 and at the Vienna State Opera two years later.

The stature he came to enjoy in Vienna was crucial to his transformation from a flamboyant showman to a more mellow maestro. To be accepted by the Viennese, where Romanticism had reached its apogee, where Mozart, Beethoven, Schuber and Mahler lived and worked, gave Bernstein a status few of his peers enjoyed. His association with Vienna was crowned when he was made an honorary member of the Vienna Philharmonic in 1983.

His fruitful work with young people in Tanglewood inspired him to set up a "Tanglewood in Europe" at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in the late 1980s. He founded a similar institution, the Pacific Music Festival, in Sapporo, Japan, in 1990. Shortly before this festival was inaugurated in June 1990, Bernstein fell ill. But despite his doctor's warnings, he flew to Japan, confiding, "At my very advanced old age, I have to make the choice of how best to serve music...my decision has been...to spend most of the remaining energy and time the Lord grants me with education, sharing as much as possible with younger people". Three months later, on October 14, 1990, Leonard Bernstein passed away.

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