West Side Story has even found a home in the opera house, as our friends at Houston Grand Opera have shown with their upcoming production. Now, over 27 years after his passing, his works seem to have found a secure place in the repertoire. Leonard Bernstein conducting.ĭuring his life he was often criticized for this musical cross pollination, and many of his contemporaries in the classical music world never took him seriously as a composer. Likewise, he brought the age-old symphonic techniques of the great composers to his popular scores, giving them a rare complexity and richness. Even in his most ‘serious’ compositions, his love of vernacular styles like jazz and rock ‘n’ roll shines through. Leonard Bernstein was one of the few figures to bridge that divide, composing hit musicals, an operetta and a film score in addition to symphonies, ballets, operas and sacred works. The musical culture of the twentieth century was marked by a sharp divide between the highbrow and lowbrow, the classical and the popular. Though he won his greatest fame as a conductor during his life, as the years pass Bernstein is increasingly remembered as a composer, an irony that would have amused and gratified him.
2018 marks the centennial of his birth, and orchestras all over the world are celebrating his legacy. He would go on to be one of the century’s greatest conductors, as well as a charismatic television personality, a passionate educator and an outspoken political activist. He made the front page of the New York Times, and overnight he became a star. Leonard Bernstein in 1945.īecause he was Leonard Bernstein, it was perhaps the most memorable and successful debut of any conductor in music history.
#Leonard bernstein musical compositions professional
That afternoon, he walked out onto the stage of Carnegie Hall to make his debut conducting a major professional orchestra.
Completely hung over, Bernstein met with a sniffling Walter to go over the complicated scores the next morning and called his parents to tell them to come to the concert (his father, Sam Bernstein, had always tried to dissuade him from pursuing a career in music).
There would be no time for rehearsal, and the concert would be nationally broadcast over the radio. After much carousing, Bernstein received a call informing him that the eminent conductor Bruno Walter was ill and that as the New York Philharmonic’s assistant conductor, it fell to him to lead the concert the following day. On the evening of November 13, 1943, the 25-year-old Leonard Bernstein was out celebrating the successful premiere of his first composition to appear before the New York public: I Hate Music, a charming, miniature song cycle about a child’s irreverent musings.
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