Leonard Bernstein was a philanthropist, innovator, educator, conductor, composer. He was a truly a master of his time! He changed everything in classical music, in a positive way.
As a composer, he wrote in pretty much every style: symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and thetre music, choral music and solo pieces for piano. Bernstein met Aaron Copland at his birthday party in 1938 and decided to play Copland's Piano Variations at the party. Bernstein loved this work, but had never known anything about the composer until that evening. From then on, Bernstein regularly went to Copland for advice on his compositions and has seen him as "his only real composition teacher."
As a conductor, even after he rose to fame, Bernstein endeavored to make music accessible for all. In 1954, Bernstein was the first conductor to present a series of television lectures on Classical music and his this continued until his death in 1990.
As you can see, he leads us from the very birth of primordial, monotonal music all the way up to the chromatic experiments of the 20th century, and all he has was a great script and a piano.
In this video, using Beethoven as example, Leonard Bernstein explains exactly what's improtant about conducting: tempo, instinct, drama, interpretation - and occasionally the composer's wishes!
He never give up...
During his last performance as a conductor, suffering from lung disease, he suffered a coughing during the third movement of Beethoven Symphony No.7. However, like a true professional, Bernstein kept conducting until the end of the work.
Finally, he left us a quote...
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