Leonard Bernstein Conductor Essentials

Leonard Bernstein’s sheer strength of personality and fierce intellect were major tools in his ability to motivate and get the very best from any orchestra. In 1958, at the age of 40, Bernstein became the New York Philharmonic’s first US-born music director, loved equally by audiences and players. The joyousness of his music-making spills over in the 200-plus recordings he made with them, including thrilling performances of Stravinsky, Beethoven, and Schubert, not to mention the American music that Bernstein championed, including pioneering albums of Charles Ives and, of course, his own works. Bernstein recorded with dozens of orchestras throughout his life. Whether in Chicago, Israel, Amsterdam, or London, the overriding impression among musicians was of a man who put his love of music first. Hear, for example, the thrilling rhythmic vitality of his performance of Rhapsody in Blue where Bernstein conducts the Columbia Symphony Orchestra from the keyboard, or the tense fieriness of Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony with the Chicago Symphony. But it was in Vienna where Bernstein found his true musical home and where he set down some of his greatest recorded legacies: Mahler, Beethoven, Mozart, and Bruckner—all in life-changing performances.