American composer Leonard Bernstein: biography, creativity and interesting facts

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Leonard Bernstein's biography began in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was the son of Ukrainian Jews Jenny (née Reznik) and Samuel Joseph Bernstein, a beauty wholesaler. Both parents were from Rivne (now Ukraine).

Early years

His family often lived at their summer home in Sharon, Massachusetts. His grandmother insisted that the boy be named Louis, but his parents always called him Leonard. He legally changed his name to Leonard when he was fifteen, shortly after his grandmother's death. To his friends and many others, he introduced himself simply as "Lenny".

At a very early age, Leonard Bernstein heard the pianist perform and was immediately captivated by this enchanting music. Subsequently, he began to seriously study the piano, after his family acquired the piano of his cousin Lillian Goldman. Bernstein attended Harrison Grammar School and BostonLatin school. As a child, he was very close to his younger sister Shirley and often played entire Beethoven operas and symphonies on the piano with her. He had numerous piano tutors during his youth, including Helen Coates, who later became his secretary.

University

After graduating from the Boston Latin School in 1935, future conductor Leonard Bernstein attended Harvard University, where he studied music under Edward Burlingham-Hill and W alter Piston. Bernstein's greatest intellectual influence at Harvard was probably the aesthetics professor David Prall, whose multidisciplinary view of art the great composer shared for the rest of his life.

At that time, Bernstein also met with conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos. Although he never taught Bernstein, Mitropoulos' charisma and strength as a musician was a major influence in his decision to take up conducting. Mitropoulos was not stylistically close to Leonard Bernstein, but he probably influenced some of his later habits and also instilled in him an interest in Mahler.

Adult life

After studying, the future conductor lived in New York. He shared an apartment with his friend Adolph Green and often performed with him, Betty Comden, and Judy Holliday in a comedy troupe called The Revolutionaries that performed in Greenwich Village. He rented space from a music publisher, transcribed music and created arrangements under the pseudonym Lenny Umber. ("bernstein" in German "amber", as well as"amber" in English) In 1940, he began his studies at the Tanglewood Summer Institute of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the class of orchestral conductor Serge Koussevitzky.

Bernstein's friendship with Copland (who was very close to Koussevitzky) and Mitropoulos was beneficial as it helped him secure a place in the class. Perhaps Koussevitzky did not teach Bernstein the basic style of conducting (which he had already developed under Reiner), but instead became a sort of father figure to him, and perhaps instilled in him an emotional way of interpreting music. Bernstein then became Koussevitzky's assistant conductor and later dedicated his Symphony No. 2 "The Age of Unrest" to him.

Career start

November 14, 1943, newly appointed assistant conductor Arthur Rodzinsky of the New York Philharmonic, he made his major debut in no time - and without any rehearsal - after the guest conductor was unable to perform due to for the flu. The program included works by Schumann, Miklós Roz, Wagner and Richard Strauss' Don Quixote with soloist Joseph Schuster, solo cellist of the orchestra. Before the concert, Leonard Bernstein spoke with Bruno W alter, briefly discussing the upcoming difficulties in the work. The New York Times ran the story on its front page the next day and remarked in an editorial, “This is a good American success story. A warm, friendly triumph filled Carnegie Hall and spread through the air. He immediately became famous becausethe concert was broadcast nationwide via CBS Radio, and then Bernstein began performing as a guest conductor with many American orchestras.

Leading the orchestra

From 1945 to 1947, Bernstein was musical director of the Symphony Orchestra in New York, which was founded by conductor Leopold Stokowski. The orchestra (supported by the mayor) was aimed at a different audience than the New York Philharmonic, with more up-to-date programming and cheaper tickets.

Further career

Bernstein was a professor of music theory from 1951 to 1956 at Brandeis University, and in 1952 he organized the Creative Arts Festival. He staged various productions at the first festival, including the premiere of his opera Trouble in Tahiti and the English version of Kurt Weill's Three-Pen Opera. The festival was renamed after him in 2005, becoming the Leonard Bernstein Festival of Art. In 1953, he was the first American conductor to appear at La Scala in Milan, conducting the orchestra during Maria Callas' performance in Cherubini's Medea. Kallas and Bernstein worked together many times after that. Remembering that period, biographers call the most famous work of Leonard Bernstein "West Side Story".

In 1960, Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic held the Mahler Festival, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the composer's birth. Bernstein, W alter and Mitropoulos organized and directed all the performances of the festival. The composer's widow, Alma, attended some of Leonard's rehearsals. In 1960he made his first commercial recording of a Mahler symphony (the fourth), and over the next seven years he worked on the first full cycle of recordings of all nine of Mahler's completed symphonies. All of them were presented by the New York Philharmonic, except for the 8th Symphony, which was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra for a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1966. The success of these recordings, along with Bernstein concerts and television broadcasts, determined a resurgence of interest in Mahler in the 1960s, especially in the US.

Bernstein also liked the Danish composer Carl Nielsen (who was then little known in the US) and Jean Sibelius, whose popularity was beginning to fade by then. In the end, he nevertheless recorded a complete cycle of Sibelius symphonies and three Nielsen symphonies (No. 2, 4 and 5), and also recorded his violin, clarinet and flute concertos. He also recorded Nielsen's 3rd Symphony with the Royal Danish Orchestra after his highly acclaimed public performance in Denmark. Bernstein also performed with a repertoire of American composers, especially those with whom he was close, such as Aaron Copland, William Schumann and David Diamond. He also began to more actively record his own compositions for Columbia Records. This included his three symphonies, his ballets and symphonic dances from West Side Story with the New York Philharmonic. He also published his own 1944 music album, On The Town, the first nearly complete recording of the original, featuring several members of their old Broadway company, includingBetty Comden and Adolph Green. Leonard Bernstein has also collaborated with experimental jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck.

Leaving the Philharmonic

After leaving the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein continued to appear with her for many years until his death, touring Europe together in 1976 and Asia in 1979. He also strengthened his relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic, recording all nine of Mahler's completed symphonies (plus the adagio from the 10th symphony) with them between 1967 and 1976. All were recorded for Unitel Studios, with the exception of the 1967 recording, which Bernstein recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra at Ely Cathedral in 1973. In the late 1970s, the composer and conductor played and recorded Beethoven's complete symphony cycle with the Vienna Philharmonic, and in the 1980s Brahms and Schumann cycles were to follow.

Work in Europe

In 1970, Bernstein decided to star in a ninety-minute program filmed in and around Vienna during Beethoven's 200th birthday celebrations. It presents fragments of Bernstein's rehearsals and performances for Otto Schenck's Fidelio concerts. In addition to Bernstein, who conducted the 1st Piano Concerto during the performance of the Ninth Symphony performed by the Vienna Philharmonic, the young Plácido Domingo also performed as a soloist at the concert. The show, originally titled Beethoven's Birthday: Celebration in Vienna, won an Emmy and was released on DVD in 2005. In the summer of 1970, during the London Festival, he played Verdi's Requiem inSt. Paul's Cathedral with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Recent years

In 1990, Leonard Bernstein received the International Premium Imperial Award for lifetime achievement in the arts. The composer used the $100,000 prize to create the "Bernstein Educational Foundation" (BETA), Inc. He provided this grant for the development of an educational program specializing in the arts. The Leonard Bernstein Center was established in April 1992 and initiated extensive research in the field of music theory, resulting in the development of the so-called "Bernstein Model", as well as a special art education program named after the great composer and director.

On August 19, 1990, Bernstein performed as conductor at Tanglewood, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra under his direction played Benjamin Britten's and Peter Grimes's Four Marine Interludes and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. He was seized by a violent fit of coughing during the third movement of the Beethoven symphony, but Bernstein, nevertheless, continued to conduct the concerto until its conclusion, leaving the stage during a standing ovation. Less than two months later, the musical works of Leonard Bernstein "orphaned" - their creator, according to the official version, died of lung cancer.

Private life

The intimate life of the great conductor and composer causes a lot of controversy in terms of its moral assessment. AllThe official short biographies of Leonard Bernstein agree that he was 100% homosexual and only married to advance his career. All colleagues and even his wife knew about his sexual orientation. Toward the end of his life, he decided that he could no longer lie to himself and everyone else, and moved in with his then partner, musical director Tom Contran. Leonard Bernstein's quotes, which could have been more clearly judged about his personal life, have not been preserved.