Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Leonard Bernstein,
The Composer

**Bernstein in Budapest, 1983. © Bela Mezey**

According to his biographers, Leonard Bernstein always felt frustrated that his achievements as a composer were often eclipsed by his fame as a conductor and media personality. Certainly, Bernstein was the first musical figure to exploit what was then the new medium of television to bring classical music to a mass audience. His famous Young People’s Concerts introduced the post-World War generation to the inner workings of a symphony orchestra and created many of the fans who still buy classical recordings today. As a champion of Mahler, he rescued a marginal 19th century composer (and conductor) from relative obscurity to one of the most frequently performed symphonists of the 20th century.

When Bernstein was only 25, he held his first conducting post as Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic. It was in this capacity that, on November 14, 1943, he made his historic conducting debut. With only a few hours notice, he substituted for the ailing Bruno Walter at a Carnegie Hall concert. Overnight he became famous. The performance was broadcast nationwide on CBS radio and the next day made the front-page of the New York Times. This acclaim quickly led to invitations to conduct orchestras all over the world.

Although he wrote three major symphonies, Bernstein never attained the "serious composer" accolades he longed for in his lifetime at least partly because he was so eclectic and his work embraced so many genres and styles. His works successfully bridge the divide between
classical and popular idioms, combining jazz-inspired energy, theatrical panache and active stylistic eclecticism. More than nearly any other composer, Bernstein mixed influences from jazz, Tin Pan Alley, 19th-century Romanticism and 20th-century modernism.

He composed sonatas, symphonies, film, religious choral works, ballets, song cycles and, most memorable in the public's mind, Broadway musicals, including On the Town, Candide and one of the greatest ever created--West Side Story. That work alone would ensure Bernstein's reputation as a composer, but while that one work has become familiar to virtually everyone, his symphonic music is nowhere near as well known.

His Symphony No. 1 ("Jeremiah"); No. 2 ("The Age of Anxiety") and No. 3 ("Kaddish") are rarely heard in concert these days. Christopher Eschenbach and the Chicago Symphony are playing all three as part of the Ravinia Festival this summer.

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