![]() Additionally, he was a pianist, an educator, and the music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.īernstein conducting the New York City Symphony (1945) He was highly regarded as a conductor of numerous concerts, featuring many of the world's leading orchestras, a composer of three symphonies, two operas, five musical theaters or musicals, and numerous other pieces yet, he is especially known for composing the music for West Side Story. ![]() During his time at Curtis, Bernstein also studied piano with Isabella Vengerova and Heinrich Gebhard. After completing his studies at Harvard, he enrolled in the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he received the only grade of "A" that Fritz Reiner ever awarded in his class on conducting. When his father heard about the piano lessons he refused to pay for them, so Bernstein taught young students himself and used that income to pay for his own piano lessons.Īfter graduation from Boston Latin School in 1935, Bernstein attended Harvard University, where he studied music with Walter Piston and was briefly associated with the Harvard Glee Club. As a child, Bernstein attended the Garrison and Boston Latin School. He began learning to play, after his Aunt Clara gave the Bernsteins her piano when she was moving due to a divorce. ![]() At a very young age, Bernstein heard a piano performance and was immediately captivated. Despite this, the elder Bernstein frequently took him to orchestral concerts. His father, Sam Bernstein, was a businessman, and initially opposed young Leonard's interest in music. He had his name changed to Leonard officially when he was fifteen. His grandmother insisted his first name be Louis, but his parents always called him Leonard, as they liked that name better. Commenting on musical poetics and the "redicovery and reacceptance of tonality" in the Harvard Lectures given in 1973, he stated: "I believe that no matter how serial, or stochastic, or otherwise intellectualized music may be, it can always qualify as poetry as long as it is rooted in earth…and that the expressive distinctions among idioms depend ultimately on the dignity and passion of the individual creative voice."īernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1918, to a Jewish family from Rovno, Ukraine.
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