August 25, 1918
Leonard Bernstein, one of the most prolific composers and conductors in American history, is born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, to Ukrainian-Jewish parents. He begins to play the piano at age 10 and is deeply influenced by the music of his Boston synagogue. Bernstein’s father is a businessman who does not support his son’s musical interests and refuses to pay for music lessons. The young Bernstein is determined and works to pay for the lessons himself.
After graduating from Harvard and completing supplementary music programs on the East Coast, Bernstein is out of work when he receives a phone call November 14, 1943, from New York Philharmonic conductor Artur Rodzinski, asking him to fill in as a guest conductor. Bernstein’s performance launches his career. He commands ecstatic applause and is featured in a front-page article in The New York Times.
Bernstein spends the rest of the 1940s and 1950s touring the world as an orchestral conductor, teaching music at Brandeis University, writing musical scores, and recording works such as “West Side Story,” Bizet’s “Carmen” and Mahler’s “Song of the Earth.” As the conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein still finds time to write music, including “Kaddish Symphony” (1963), composed in memory of President John F. Kennedy.
The same Boston synagogue that is an early inspiration for his music also introduces Bernstein to Zionism. He makes the first of several trips to the Land of Israel in 1947 to conduct what becomes the Israel Philharmonic. Later trips include his famous concert on Mount Scopus after the June 1967 war. In 1988, the Israel Philharmonic names him conductor laureate. Bernstein dies in 1990.
