Its the birthday of conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, born in Lawrence, Massachusetts (1918). When he was 40, he became the youngest musical director ever in charge of the New York Philharmonic. Bernstein wrote scores for many musicals, including On the Town and West Side Story, as well as symphonies and scores for ballets. He also wrote a book called The Joy of Music (1959), a collection of essays and conversations about music. In it, he wrote, Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning ... except its own. The Christmas before Bernstein died, at age 72, he conducted Beethovens Ninth Symphony in Berlin to celebrate the crumbling of the wall. He died just five days after retiring. He conducted his final performance at Tanglewood, in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, on August 19, 1990. It was the Boston Symphony playing Brittens Four Sea Interludes and Beethovens Seventh Symphony.
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 14:00:25 +0000
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