Leonard Bernstein – 1918-1990

Handsome and charismatic, Bernstein earned international fame as a conductor (especially of the New York Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969) and a composer, who achieved great success in musical theater (On the Town, Wonderful Town, West Side Story, and others) and in classical composition. Bernstein was also an accomplished pianist and an influential musical educator, host of a distinguished televised series of “Young People’s Concerts,” and the author of two important texts, The Infinite Variety of Music (1966) and The Unanswered Question (1976), taken from his 1973 Harvard lecture series.