Birthday of Leonard Bernstein | Naming the Days

The music of Leonard Bernstein (1918 – 1990) — American composer, pianist, and humanitarian — nonetheless delights us, and his promotion of worldwide concord evokes us. A prodigy as a symphony conductor, he grew to become assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony at age 22 and was solely 25 when he grew to become assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, later serving as its conductor. He was the primary American to develop into Music Director of main orchestras in the USA in addition to in London, Berlin, and La Scala.

Bernstein’s compositions embrace symphonies, ballets, operas, piano, and different instrumental works. West Aspect Story and Candide stay among the many most beloved of his contributions. For 14 years Bernstein introduced Younger Folks’s Concert events with the New York Philharmonic to audiences on tv, introducing a complete era of younger folks to the marvels of music.

Bernstein’s work with Amnesty Worldwide and different organizations dedicated to therapeutic of social ills introduced vital aid and profit to many. He performed “Berlin Celebration Concert events” in 1989 on each side of the Berlin Wall because it was being torn down. The recipient of quite a few awards, together with Emmys, he wrote, “Life with out music is unthinkable; music with out life is educational. That’s the reason my contact with music is a complete embrace.”

To study extra about Bernstein’s life and work, please go to his web site.

Quotes

Leonard Bernstein thought-about music a doorway to a kinder, extra stunning world. Select one among these quotes on your reflections in honor of his birthday:

“Any nice murals … revives and readapts time and house, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world — the extent to which it invitations you in and allows you to breathe its unusual, particular air.”
— in “What Makes Opera Grand?” Vogue (December 1958)

“Einstein stated that ‘essentially the most stunning expertise we are able to have is the mysterious.’ So why accomplish that many people attempt to clarify the great thing about music, thus depriving it of its thriller?”
— in The Unanswered Query lecture collection

“This shall be our reply to violence: to make music extra intensely, extra superbly, extra devotedly than ever earlier than.”
— from ready remarks on the United Jewish Enchantment of Larger New York annual fundraising occasion, November 1963, on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Jr.

Religious Practices

Watch Bernstein conduct the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra within the Symphonic Dances from West Aspect Story on the Symphony Corridor in Osaka, Japan, in 1985:

Hearken to as a lot as your time permits. Let your coronary heart open to the stirring, multifaceted moods of this music exploring the interfaces between stress and longing, violence and love.