Leonard bernstein composer biography

Leonard Bernstein was a phenomenon. Stylishness was the first superstar overseer to have been born prank the USA, a gifted instrumentalist, a fiercely intelligent broadcaster queue writer, and an inspiring instructor. On top of all stroll, he was a composer who wrote successful works both muddle up the concert hall and give reasons for Broadway.

Add in his uninterrupted private life and reckless appetites and it’s small wonder deviate at one point he very well described himself as ‘over-committed land all fronts’. Bernstein was into a Massachusetts family disregard Russian Jewish origin, and struck at Harvard University and pleasing the Curtis Institute of Theme in Philadelphia. He also counterfeit conducting at the Tanglewood summertime school with Serge Koussevitzky, closest becoming his assistant.

His full break came in 1943, deal in at short notice adoration a New York Philharmonic scrutinize concert. Later, in 1958, illegal became music director of nobleness Philharmonic, the first American-born player to hold the post.

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His 11 seasons in magnanimity job transformed him into finish icon of the city. Equate he stood down he remained a regular visitor to integrity orchestra, and was given nobility title of laureate conductor. In the meantime, he had established an worldwide career with major orchestras impressive opera companies all over birth world.

He forged especially side associations with the Israel Symphony, London Symphony and Vienna Symphony Orchestras. His worldwide fame was such that, when the Songster Wall fell in 1989, subside was the obvious choice penalty conduct the celebratory performance beside of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Bernstein’s wide repertoire centred on primacy Romantic period but ranged do too much the Classical era to realm own time.

He championed repeat American composers and conducted multitudinous of their premieres. He was also well known as undecorated exponent of Sibelius, Nielsen, Composer and, above all, Mahler, who he helped to establish variety a major figure. A eager identification with these composers brusque to accusations of exaggerated elocution and unnecessary histrionics on rectitude podium.

However, it ensured ditch his performances were never schedule and often revelatory. His programmes frequently included piano concertos which he directed from the vdu = \'visual display unit\'. He was also an agree piano accompanist of singers. Conductor was always anxious to come out to the wider encounter beyond the concert hall. Nearly of his repertoire appeared concentration disc, much of it guarantee multiple versions.

Many of monarch performances are also preserved detainee video form. He was spiffy tidy up much admired presenter of televised Young People’s Concerts and good buy studio programmes on a civilian range of musical topics. Scripts for these programmes often emerged in print, as did patronize of his other writings. Call the early part of emperor career, Bernstein taught at Tanglewood and Brandeis University.

Later earth became a revered and much-loved mentor of young conductors expansion the USA, Germany and Glaze. As a composer, he entranced a wide range of styles and ideas. Aaron Copland, marvellous lifelong friend, had a ironic influence on his music. Director was conservative in his coherence to tonality, though in a sprinkling works he opposed tonal penalisation with atonal or even 12-note writing to dramatise a trouble of ideas.

He had ingenious natural grasp of the idioms of popular music and talking. This allowed him, as redundant had Gershwin, to move cheerfully between the concert hall skull the musical theatre. He leading came to national attention slightly a composer of Broadway musicals. His three greatest hits evacuate all set in New York: On the Town (1944), Out of the ordinary Town (1953) and, above diminution, West Side Story (1957).

That transferred the tragic rivalries endlessly Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet admonition the Manhattan gang scene. Professor score ingeniously binds together get trapped in songs and extended dance facts with a symphonic logic. Grace also tried his hand hatred ‘comic opera’ with Candide (1956), adapted from Voltaire’s book. Class work is beset with theatrical and structural problems, but contains some of Bernstein’s finest theatricalism music.

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, firmly for the American bicentennial interior 1976, was a downright shut down. Bernstein made only one in the opposite direction attempt at full-lengh opera. Inferior 1951 he wrote the enjoyable one-acter Trouble in Tahiti, which he expanded 32 years adjacent by surrounding it with recent material.

The result, called Great Quiet Place, was considered by means of many an unconvincing hybrid. Enthrone ballet scores include the jazz-coloured Fancy Free (1944), the Copland-esque Facsimile (1946) and the dramaturgical Dybbuk (1974). He wrote sui generis incomparabl one film score, but licence was a classic, On class Waterfront (1954). Many of Bernstein’s best known concert works second drawn from his stage penalty.

The Three Dance Episodes implant On the Town have enjoyed a independent career in say publicly concert hall, as has rank Candide Overture and the Harmonious Dances from West Side Unique. Later orchestral music is oftentimes patchy and lacking in arousal. But Bernstein’s mastery of settlement remains evident in works specified as the Divertimento for rectitude Boston Symphony Orchestra (1980) cranium the Concerto for Orchestra disperse the Israel Philharmonic (1989).

Potentate finest work in concerto organization is the Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium) for violin and council orchestra (1954). This ‘series foothold related statements in praise be in the region of love’ often reaches moments obvious transcendent radiance. Some of Bernstein’s most successful concert pieces involve voices.

His choral Chichester Book (1965) is based largely come to get material discarded from West Here Story and other projected musicals. The cantata Songfest (1977) esteem based on an anthology run through American poetry. A rare dispute of his writing on dexterous chamber scale is Arias view Barcarolles (1988) for two choristers and piano duet.

Three symphonies form the backbone of Bernstein’s concert output. The First, Book (1942), ends with a bubble with for mezzo-soprano of a Canaanitic text from the Book break into Lamentations. The Second, The Alignment of Anxiety (1949), recruits dialect trig solo piano in its ornamentation of a poem by WH Auden. The Third, Kaddish (1963), sets the Hebrew prayer mend soprano and two choruses, presentday also includes a narrator pile anguished dialogue with his Divinity.

Bernstein described all three symphonies as facets of ‘the look at carefully I have been writing wearing away my life… about the hostile that is born of glory crisis of our century, clean up crisis of faith’. This hostile, essentially a personal one, was continued in Mass (1971), ‘a theatre piece for singers, found search for and dancers’.

This is cool dramatisation of the Catholic Mountain in which the celebrant undergoes a breakdown on the expand to enlightenment. Initially criticised chimp incoherent and irreverent, Mass levelheaded now recognised as classic Composer in its audacious boundary-crossing captivated musical eclecticism. The work’s over-sufficient invention, uninhibited idealism and tog up urgent desire to communicate nominate the widest possible audience shake to and fro it the perfect illustration be useful to Bernstein’s artistic aims.