Leonard Bernstein
(, Wikipedia:United States dictionary transcription
}}}; [1] August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was a multi-Emmy and Grammy award-winning [2] and Academy Award nominated American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim. He is perhaps best known for his long conducting relationship with the New York Philharmonic, which included the acclaimed Young People's Concerts
series, and also for his compositions, which include the musical theater works West Side Story
, Candide
, and On the Town.
Bernstein was the first classical music conductor to make numerous television appearances, perhaps more than any other classical conductor, all between 1954 and 1989. Additionally, he had a formidable piano technique [3] and was a highly respected composer. According to the New York Times, he was "one of the most prodigally talented and successful musicians in American history."[
]
Bernstein was very highly regarded as a conductor, composer, and educator. He was probably best known to the public as the longtime music director of the New York Philharmonic, for conducting concerts by many of the world's leading orchestras, and for writing the music for West Side Story.
He wrote three symphonies, two operas, five musicals, and numerous other pieces.
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LEONARD BERNSTEIN TICKETS
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Biography
Early life
Bernstein was born in
Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1918, to a Russian
Jewish family. The Bernsteins spent their summers at their vacation home in
Sharon, MA. His grandmother insisted that his first name be
Louis
, but his parents always called him
Leonard
, because they liked the name more. He had his name changed to
Leonard
officially when he was fifteen.
[4] His father, Sam Bernstein, was a businessman and owner of a bookstore in downtown Lawrence, which is still standing today on the corners of Amesbury and Essex Streets. Sam initially opposed young Leonard's interest in music. Despite this, the elder Bernstein frequently took him to orchestra concerts. At a very young age, Bernstein listened to a
piano performance and was immediately captivated; he subsequently began learning the piano. As a child, Bernstein attended the Garrison School and
Boston Latin School.
[5]
After graduation from Boston Latin School in 1934, Bernstein attended
Harvard University, where he studied music with
Walter Piston, the author of many harmony and counterpoint textbooks, and was briefly associated with the
Harvard Glee Club.
[6] One of his friends at Harvard was
Donald Davidson, considered one of the leading philosophers of the 20th century, with whom he played piano four hands. Bernstein wrote and conducted the musical score for the production that Davidson mounted of
Aristophanes' play
The Birds
in the original Greek. Some of this music was later to be reused in Bernstein's ballet
Fancy Free
.
After completing his studies at Harvard, he enrolled at the
Curtis Institute of Music in
Philadelphia, where he received the only "A" grade
Fritz Reiner ever awarded in his class on conducting. During his time at Curtis, Bernstein also studied piano with
Isabella Vengerova,
[7] orchestration with
Randall Thompson, counterpoint with
Richard Stöhr, and score reading with Renée Longy Miquelle.
[8]
Early career
During his young adult years in New York City, Bernstein enjoyed an exuberant social life that included relationships with both men and women. After a long internal struggle and a turbulent on-and-off engagement, he married Chilean actress
Felicia Montealegre Cohn on September 9, 1951, reportedly in order to increase his chances of obtaining the chief conducting position with the
Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Dimitri Mitropoulos, conductor of the
New York Philharmonic and Bernstein's mentor, advised him that marrying would help counter the gossip about him and appease the conservative
BSO board.
[9]
Leonard and Felicia had three children, Jamie, Alexander, and Nina.
[10] During his married life, Bernstein tried to be as discreet as possible with his extramarital liaisons. But as he grew older, and as the
Gay Liberation movement made great strides, Bernstein became more emboldened, eventually leaving Felicia to live with his lover, Tom Cothran. Some time after, Bernstein learned that his wife was diagnosed with
lung cancer. Bernstein moved back in with his wife and cared for her until she died June 16, 1978.
[11]
It has been suggested that Bernstein was actually
bisexual—an assertion supported by comments that Bernstein himself made about not preferring any particular cuisine, musical genre, or form of sex—and it has been alleged that he was conflicted between his devotion to his family and his gay desires, but
Arthur Laurents (Bernstein's collaborator in
West Side Story
) said that Bernstein was simply "a gay man who got married. He wasn't conflicted about it at all. He was just gay."
[12] Shirley Rhoades Perle, another friend of Bernstein's, said that she thought "he required men sexually and women emotionally."
[13]
1940–1950
In 1940, Bernstein began his study at the
Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer institute,
Tanglewood, under the orchestra's conductor,
Serge Koussevitzky. Bernstein later became Koussevitzky's conducting assistant.
[14] He would later dedicate his
Symphony No. 2
to Koussevitzky.
[15]
On November 14, 1943, having recently been appointed assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, he made his conducting debut on last-minute notification—and without any rehearsal—after
Bruno Walter came down with the flu. The next day,
The New York Times
editorial remarked, "It's a good American success story. The warm, friendly triumph of it filled Carnegie Hall and spread far over the air waves."
[16] He was an immediate success and became instantly famous because the concert was nationally broadcast. The soloist on that historic day was
Joseph Schuster, solo cellist of the New York Philharmonic, who played
Richard Strauss's
Don Quixote
. Because Bernstein had never conducted the work before, Bruno Walter coached him on it prior to the concert. It is possible to hear this remarkable event thanks to a transcription recording made from the CBS radio broadcast that has since been issued on CD.
After World War II, Bernstein's career on the international stage began to flourish. In 1946, he conducted his first opera, the American première of
Benjamin Britten's
Peter Grimes,
which had been a Koussevitzky commission. In 1949, he conducted the world première of the
Turangalîla-Symphonie
by
Olivier Messiaen, and when Koussevitzky died two years later, Bernstein became head of the orchestral and conducting departments at Tanglewood, holding this position for many years.
1951–1959
In 1951, Bernstein conducted the New York Philharmonic in the world première of the
Symphony No. 2
of
Charles Ives. The composer, old and frail, was unable to attend the concert, but listened to the broadcast on the radio with his wife, Harmony. Both of them marveled at the enthusiastic reception of his music, which had actually been written between 1897 and 1901, but had never been performed. Throughout his career, Bernstein did much to promote the music of this American composer. Ives died in 1954. Bernstein was also a visiting music professor in the early 1950s and was the founder/head of the Creative Arts Festivals at
Brandeis University from 1952 onward.
[17] The festival was named after him in 2005, becoming the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts.
Bernstein was named the principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1957 and began his tenure in that position in 1958, a post he held until 1969, although he continued to conduct and make recordings with that orchestra for the rest of his life. He became a well-known figure in the United States through his series of fifty-three televised
Young People's Concerts for
CBS, which grew out of his
Omnibus
programs that CBS aired in the early 1950s. His first Young People's Concert was televised only a few weeks after his tenure as principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic began. He became as famous for his educational work in those concerts as for his conducting. The Bernstein Young People's Concerts were the first, and still are, the most successful series of music appreciation programs ever done on television, and were highly acclaimed by critics.
[18] Some of Bernstein's music lectures were released on records, with several of these albums winning
Grammy awards.
To this day, the
Young People's Concerts
series remains the longest-running single group of classical music programs ever shown on commercial television. They ran from 1958 to 1972, and none of the programs were repeated on television during the series' original run (there would usually be four programs per year). More than thirty years later, twenty-five of them were rebroadcast on the now-defunct cable channel
Trio and were released on
DVD.
In 1947, Bernstein conducted in
Tel Aviv for the first time, beginning a life-long association with
Israel. In 1957, he conducted the inaugural concert of the
Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv; he subsequently made many recordings there. In 1967, he conducted a concert on
Mt. Scopus to commemorate the reunification of
Jerusalem. During the 1970s, Bernstein recorded most of his own symphonic music with the
Israel Philharmonic.
1949 marked the beginning of a collaborative project with the choreographer
Jerome Robbins and the writer
Arthur Laurents, later joined by
Stephen Sondheim, that after years of intermittent work resulted, in 1957, in the Broadway premiere of
West Side Story, the phenomenally successful musical that was to prove Bernstein's most enduring and beloved work.
In 1959, he took the New York Philharmonic on a tour of Europe and the Soviet Union, portions of which were filmed by
CBS. A major highlight of the tour was Bernstein's performance of
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 New York, they recorded the symphony for Columbia. He made two recordings of Shostakovich's
Leningrad Symphony,
one with the New York Philharmonic in the 1960s and another one in 1988 with the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the only recording he ever made with them (along with Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1, also recorded live in concerts at Orchestra Hall in Chicago at that time).
1960–1969
In 1960, Bernstein began the first complete cycle of recordings in stereo of all nine completed symphonies by
Gustav Mahler, with the blessings of the composer's widow,
Alma. The success of these recordings, along with Bernstein's concert performances, greatly revived interest in Mahler, who had briefly been music director of the New York Philharmonic late in his life.
That same year, Bernstein conducted an LP of his own score for the 1944 musical
On The Town,
in stereo, the first such recording of the score ever made, for
Columbia Masterworks Records. Unlike his later recordings of his own musicals, this was originally issued as a single LP rather than a 2-record set. It was later issued on CD. The recording featured several members of the original Broadway cast, including
Betty Comden and
Adolph Green.
In one storied incident, in April 1962, Bernstein appeared on stage before a performance of the
Brahms D Minor Concerto, Op. 15. The soloist was the legendary 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 stating,
Don't be frightened; Mr. Gould is here (audience laughter). He will appear in a moment. I'm not—um—as you know in the habit of speaking on any concert except the Thursday-night previews, but a curious situation has arisen, which merits, I think, a word or two. You are about to hear a rather, shall we say, unorthodox performance of the Brahms D Minor Concerto, a performance distinctly different from any I've ever heard, or even dreamt of for that matter, in its remarkably broad tempi and its frequent departures from Brahms' dynamic indications. I cannot say I am in total agreement with Mr. Gould's conception, and this raises the interesting question: "What am I doing conducting it?" (mild laughter from the audience). I'm conducting it because Mr. Gould is so valid and serious an artist that I must take seriously anything he conceives in good faith, and his conception is interesting enough that I feel you should hear it, too.
But the age old question still remains: "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. But almost always, the two manage to get together by persuasion or charm or even threats (audience laughs) to achieve a unified performance. I have only once before in my life had to submit to a soloist's wholly new and incompatible concept and that was the last time I accompanied Mr. Gould (audience laughs loudly). But, but this
time, the discrepancies between our views are so great that I feel I must make this small disclaimer. Then why, to repeat the question, am I conducting it? Why do I not make a minor scandal—get a substitute soloist, or let an assistant conduct it?
Because I am fascinated
, glad to have the chance for a new look at this much-played work; because, what's more, there are moments in Mr. Gould's performance that emerge with astonishing freshness and conviction. Thirdly, because we can all
learn something from this extraordinary artist who is a thinking
performer, and finally because there is in music what Dimitri Mitropoulos used to call "the sportive
element" (mild audience laughter)—that factor of curiosity, adventure, experiment—and I can assure you that it has
been an adventure this week (audience laughter) collaborating with Mr. Gould on this Brahms concerto, and it's in this spirit of adventure that we now present it to you. [19]
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
[20]. Throughout his life, he professed enormous admiration and personal friendship for Gould.
During his New York Philharmonic directorship, Bernstein was also responsible for introducing the symphonies of the Danish composer
Carl Nielsen to American audiences, leading to a revival of interest in this composer whose reputation had previously been mostly regional. Bernstein recorded three of Nielsen's symphonies (Nos. 2, 4, and 5) with the Philharmonic, and he recorded the composer's 3rd Symphony with a Danish orchestra after a critically acclaimed public performance in Denmark.
In 1966, he made his debut at the
Vienna State Opera conducting
Luchino Visconti's production of
Verdi's
Falstaff,
with
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Falstaff. In 1970, he returned to the State Opera 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.
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 stunned, but cheering, audience.
1970–1979
Beginning in 1970, Bernstein conducted the
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, with which he re-recorded many of the pieces that he had previously taped with the
New York Philharmonic, including sets of the complete symphonies of
Beethoven,
Brahms, and
Schumann. Some of the Mahler symphony recordings from Bernstein's second cycle for Deutsche Grammophon were also made with the Vienna Philharmonic.
Later that year, Bernstein wrote and narrated a ninety-minute program filmed on location in and around
Vienna, featuring the Vienna Philharmonic with such artists as
Plácido Domingo, who in his first television appearance performed as the tenor soloist in
Beethoven's Ninth.
The program, first telecast in 1970 on Austrian and British television, and then on CBS on
Christmas Eve 1971, was intended as a celebration of Beethoven's 200th birthday. The show made extensive use of the rehearsals and finished performance of the Otto Schenk production of
Fidelio.
Originally entitled
Beethoven's Birthday: A Celebration in Vienna,
the show, which won an Emmy, was telecast only once on U.S. commercial television, and it remained in CBS's vaults, until it resurfaced on
A&E shortly after Bernstein's death—under the new title
Bernstein on Beethoven: A Celebration in Vienna.
It was immediately issued on
VHS under that title, and in 2005 it was issued on
DVD.
September 8, 1971 saw the world premiere of
Mass (Bernstein), commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy for the opening of the
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Subtitled "A Theater Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers," intended in part as an anti-war statement, and hastily written in places, the work represented a fusion not only of different religious traditions (its texts juxtapose the Latin liturgy with Hebrew prayer and plenty of contemporary English lyrics) but of different musical styles, making it a target of criticism from the Catholic Church on the one hand, and contemporary music critics who objected to its Broadway/populist elements on the other. Mass, however, has since been embraced by the church - it was performed at Vatican City in 2000 - and, slowly but surely, into the canon.
In 1972, he recorded a performance of
Bizet's
Carmen,
with
Marilyn Horne in the title role and
James McCracken as Don Jose, after leading several stage performances of the 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.
Bernstein was invited in 1973 to the
Charles Eliot Norton Chair as Professor of Poetry at his alma mater, Harvard University, to deliver a series of six lectures on music. Borrowing the title from a Charles Ives work, he called the series "The Unanswered Question"; it is a set of interdisciplinary lectures in which he borrows terminology from contemporary linguistics to analyze and compare musical construction to language. Three years later, in 1976, the entire series of videotaped lectures was telecast on PBS. The lectures survive in both book and DVD form today.
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.
In 1978, the Otto Schenk
Fidelio,
with Bernstein still conducting, but featuring a different cast, was filmed by Unitel. Like the program
Bernstein on Beethoven,
it also was shown on A&E after his death and subsequently issued on VHS. Although the video has since long been out of print, it was released for the first time 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 performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Bernstein's
Chichester Psalms at the
Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and at
Carnegie Hall in NYC.
In 1979, Bernstein conducted the
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for the first and only time, in two charity concerts. The performance, of Mahler's
Ninth Symphony, was broadcast on radio and was posthumously released on CD.
1980–1990
Bernstein received the
Kennedy Center Honors award in 1980.
On
PBS in the 1980s, he was the conductor and commentator for a special series on Beethoven's music, which featured the Vienna Philharmonic playing all nine Beethoven symphonies, several of his overtures, one of the string quartets arranged for the full string section of the Vienna Philharmonic, and the
Missa Solemnis. Actor
Maximilian Schell was also featured on the program, reading from Beethoven's letters. This series has since been released on DVD.
In 1982, he and Ernest Fleischmann founded the
Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute, where he served as Artistic Director through 1984.
Leonard Bernstein was a regular guest conductor of The
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in
Amsterdam. In the 1980s, he recorded, among other pieces, Mahler's First, Second, Fourth, and Ninth Symphonies with them.
In 1985, he conducted a complete recording of his score for
West Side Story
for the first and only time. The recording, much criticized for featuring what critics felt were miscast opera singers such as
Kiri te Kanawa,
José Carreras, and
Tatiana Troyanos in the leading roles, was nevertheless a national bestseller.
In 1989, Bernstein again conducted and recorded another complete performance of one of his musicals, again featuring opera singers rather than Broadway stars. This time it was
Candide,
and because the show was always intended to be an
operetta, the recording made from it was much more warmly received. The performance was released posthumously on CD (in 1991). It starred
Jerry Hadley,
June Anderson,
Adolph Green, and
Christa Ludwig in the leading roles. The
Candide
recording, unlike the
West Side Story
one, also included previously discarded numbers from the show.
A TV documentary of the
West Side Story
recording sessions was made in 1985, and the
Candide
recording was made live, in concert. This concert was eventually telecast posthumously.
On Christmas Day, December 25, 1989, Bernstein conducted the
Beethoven Symphony No. 9
in
East Berlin's
Schauspielhaus
(Playhouse) as part of a celebration of the fall of the
Berlin Wall. 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,
substituting the word
Freiheit
(freedom) for
Freude
(joy).
[21] Bernstein, in the introduction to the program, 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's comment was, "I'm sure that Beethoven would have given us his blessing."
Bernstein conducted his final performance at
Tanglewood on August 19, 1990, with the Boston Symphony playing
Benjamin Britten's "Four Sea Interludes" and
Beethoven's
Seventh Symphony.
[22] He suffered a coughing fit in the middle of the Beethoven performance which almost caused the concert to break down. The concert was later issued on CD by Deutsche Grammophon.
He died of
pneumonia and a pleural tumor just five days after retiring.
[23] A longtime heavy smoker, he had battled
emphysema from his mid-50s. On the day of his funeral procession through the streets of Manhattan, construction workers removed their hats and waved, yelling "Goodbye, Lenny."
[24] Bernstein is buried in
Green-Wood Cemetery,
Brooklyn, New York.
Influence
Bernstein was highly regarded as a conductor among many musicians, including the members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, 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 considered especially accomplished with the works of
Gustav Mahler; with his own compositions; and with American composers
Aaron Copland,
Charles Ives,
William Schuman, and
George Gershwin. His recordings of
Rhapsody in Blue (full-orchestra version) and
An American in Paris with the Philharmonic, released in 1959, are considered definitive by many, although, for reasons unknown, Bernstein would always cut the
Rhapsody
slightly. Unfortunately, he never conducted a performance of Gershwin's
Piano Concerto in F, nor did he ever conduct
Porgy and Bess.
However, he did discuss
Porgy
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.
He had a gift for rehearsing an entire Mahler symphony by acting out every phrase for the orchestra to convey the precise meaning and by emitting a vocal manifestation of the effect required, with a subtly professional ear that missed nothing.
Bernstein influenced many conductors who are performing now, such as
Marin Alsop,
Alexander Frey,
John Mauceri,
Seiji Ozawa,
Carl St.Clair, and
Michael Tilson Thomas. Ozawa made his first network television debut as the guest conductor on one of the
Young People's Concerts.
His work helped make a lasting impression on Pope Benedict XVI. The then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote, "... For me an unforgettable experience was the Bach concert that Leonard Bernstein conducted in Munich after the sudden death of
Karl Richter. I was sitting next to the Lutheran Bishop Hanselmann. When the last note of one of the great Thomas-Kantor-Cantatas triumphantly faded away, we looked at each other spontaneously and right then we said: "Anyone who has heard this, knows that the faith is true". The music had such an extraordinary force of reality that we realized, no longer by deduction, but by the impact on our hearts, that it could not have originated from nothingness, but could only have come to be through the power of the Truth that became real in the composer's inspiration."
[25]
Recordings
Bernstein recorded extensively from the 1950s until just a few months before his death. Aside from a few early recordings in the mid-1940s for
RCA Victor, Bernstein recorded primarily for
Columbia Masterworks Records, especially when he was music director of the New York Philharmonic. Many of these performances have been digitally remastered and reissued by
Sony as part of the "Royal Edition" and "Bernstein Century" series. His later recordings (1976 onwards) were mostly made for
Deutsche Grammophon, though he would occasionally return to the Columbia Masterworks 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 Orchestra for
Decca Records (1966);
Berlioz'
Symphonie Fantastique
(1976) for
EMI; and
Wagner's
Tristan und Isolde
(1981) for
Philips Records, a label joint with Deutsche Grammophon as
PolyGram at that time.
In August 2008,
Sony BMG Masterworks released a 10-disc set of Bernstein's recordings of his own works as a composer,
The Original Jacket Collection: Bernstein Conducts Bernstein
[26], which heralds and .
Carnegie Hall and the
New York Philharmonic's three-month program of events, entitled
Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds,
pays tribute to each aspect of Bernstein's legacy with 50 concerts and education events. 2008 also marked the 65th anniversary of Bernstein's historic Carnegie Hall debut.
Works
Stage works
- Fancy Free
(ballet), 1944
- On The Town
(musical), 1944
- Facsimile
(ballet), 1946
- Peter Pan
(songs, incidental music), 1950
- Trouble in Tahiti
(opera in one act), 1952
- Wonderful Town
(musical), 1953
- On the Waterfront
(film score), 1954
- The Lark
(incidental music), 1955
- Candide
(operetta), 1956 (new libretto in 1973, operetta revised in 1989)
- West Side Story
(musical), 1957
- ''The Firstborn (incidental music), 1958
- Mass
(theatre piece for singers, players and dancers), 1971
- Dybbuk
(ballet), 1974
- 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
(musical), 1976
- The Madwoman of Central Park West
(songs), 1979
- A Quiet Place
(opera in two acts), 1983
- The Race to Urga
(musical), 1987
Orchestral
- Symphony No. 1, Jeremiah
, 1942
- Fancy Free
and Three Dance Variations from "Fancy Free,"
, concert premiere 1946
- Three Dance Episodes from "On the Town,"
concert premiere 1947
- Symphony No. 2, The Age of Anxiety
, (after W. H. Auden) for Piano and Orchestra, 1949 (revised in 1965)
- Serenade for Solo Violin, Strings, Harp and Percussion (after Plato's "Symposium")
, 1954
- Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs
for Solo Clarinet and Jazz Ensemble, 1949
- Symphonic Suite from "On the Waterfront"
, 1955
- Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story"
, 1961
- Symphony No. 3, Kaddish
, for Orchestra, Mixed Chorus, Boys' Choir, Speaker and Soprano Solo, 1963 (revised in 1977)
- Dybbuk
, Suites No. 1 and 2 for Orchestra, concert premieres 1975
- Songfest: A Cycle of American Poems for Six Singers and Orchestra
, 1977
- Three Meditations from "Mass"
for Violoncello and Orchestra, 1977
- ''Slava! A Political Overture for Orchestra, 1977
- Divertimento for Orchestra
, 1980
- Halil
, nocturne for Solo Flute, Piccolo, Alto Flute, Percussion, Harp and Strings, 1981
- Concerto for Orchestra
, 1989 (Originally Jubilee Games
from 1986, revised in 1989)
Overture to Candide
Choral
- Hashkiveinu
for Cantor (tenor), Mixed Chorus and Organ, 1945
- Missa Brevis
for Mixed Chorus and Countertenor Solo, with Percussion, 1988
- Chichester Psalms
for Boy Soprano (or Countertenor), Mixed Chorus, and Orchestra, 1965 (Reduced version for Organ, Harp and Percussion)
Chamber music
- Piano Trio, 1937, Boosey & Hawkes
- Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, 1939
- Brass Music, 1959
- Dance Suite, 1988
Vocal music
- I Hate Music: A cycle of Five Kids Songs for Soprano and Piano
, 1943
- La Bonne Cuisine: Four Recipes for Voice and Piano
, 1948
- Arias and Barcarolles
for Mezzo-Soprano, Baritone and Piano four-hands, 1988
- Two Love Songs
, 1960
- So Pretty
, 1968
- Piccola Serenata
, 1988
- Silhouette (Galilee)
, 1951
- Big Stuff
, sung by Billie Holiday
Piano Music
- 7 Anniversaries
, 1944
- 4 Anniversaries
, 1948
- 5 Anniversaries
, 1951
- 13 Anniversaries
, 1988
- Piano Sonata
, 1938
- Touches
, 1981
- Music for Two Pianos
, 1937
- Bridal Suite
, 1960
- Moby Diptych
, 1981 (republished as Anniversaries nos. 1 and 2 in Thirteen Anniversaries
Other music
- Other occasional works, written as gifts and other forms of memorial and tribute
- "The Skin of Our Teeth": An aborted work from which Bernstein took material to use in his "Chichester Psalms"
- "Simhu Na" (arrangement of traditional song)
- "Waltz for Mippy" for Tuba and Piano
- "Elegy for Mippy II" for Trombone and Piano
This list is incomplete; you can help by [ expanding it]
.
Bibliography
- Bernstein, Leonard. [1976] , Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-92001-5.
Videography
- The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard
. West Long Branch, New Jersey: Kultur Video. VHS ISBN 1561275700. DVD ISBN 0769715702. (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 0769715036.
- Bernstein on Beethoven: A Celebration in Vienna/Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1.
West Long Branch, Kultur Video. DVD ASIN: B000E3LCVY
Awards
- Ditson Conductor's Award, 1958
- Sonning Award (1965; Denmark)
- George Peabody Medal - Johns Hopkins University
- 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
Notes
- Listening to Movies 8)
- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0077086/awards
- Laird, Paul R. ''Leonard Bernstein: A Guide to Research.'' Routledge, 2002. p. 10.
- Bernstein, a biography
- Peyser (1987), p. 34
- Peyser (1987), p. 39–40
- Peyser (1987) (Bernstein complained later that she taught him an incorrect piano technique), p. 38–9
- Title Unavailable
- Burton, ''Leonard Bernstein'')
- Peyser (1987), pp. 196, 204, 322
- Burton, ''Leonard Bernstein''
- Charles Kaiser, "The Gay Metropolis, New York City: 1940–1996"
- Meryle Secrest, "Leonard Bernstein: A Life"
- About Bernstein
- Leonard Bernstein - Biography
- Pathétique
- The Official Leonard Bernstein Web Site. http://www.leonardbernstein.com/about.php
- http://www.leonardbernstein.com/ypc_publications.htm
- Transcription of Bernstein's Glenn Gould Introduction (from a Rutgers University webpage)
- ''Glenn Gould: Variations'', Ed. John McGreevy
- ''Ode To Freedom - Beethoven: Symphony No. 9'' (NTSC)
- The Writer's Almanac
- Leonard Bernstein, 72, Music's Monarch, Dies
- ''American Masters'' documentary, PBS
- Message to Communion and Liberation, August 2002, via Zenit May 2, 2005
- Title Unavailable
References
- Listening to Movies 8)
- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0077086/awards
- Laird, Paul R. ''Leonard Bernstein: A Guide to Research.'' Routledge, 2002. p. 10.
- Bernstein, a biography
- Peyser (1987), p. 34
- Peyser (1987), p. 39–40
- Peyser (1987) (Bernstein complained later that she taught him an incorrect piano technique), p. 38–9
- Title Unavailable
- Burton, ''Leonard Bernstein'')
- Peyser (1987), pp. 196, 204, 322
- Burton, ''Leonard Bernstein''
- Charles Kaiser, "The Gay Metropolis, New York City: 1940–1996"
- Meryle Secrest, "Leonard Bernstein: A Life"
- About Bernstein
- Leonard Bernstein - Biography
- Pathétique
- The Official Leonard Bernstein Web Site. http://www.leonardbernstein.com/about.php
- http://www.leonardbernstein.com/ypc_publications.htm
- Transcription of Bernstein's Glenn Gould Introduction (from a Rutgers University webpage)
- ''Glenn Gould: Variations'', Ed. John McGreevy
- ''Ode To Freedom - Beethoven: Symphony No. 9'' (NTSC)
- The Writer's Almanac
- Leonard Bernstein, 72, Music's Monarch, Dies
- ''American Masters'' documentary, PBS
- Message to Communion and Liberation, August 2002, via Zenit May 2, 2005
- Title Unavailable