After Bernstein's performance at the White House in 1960, President Eisenhower remarked, "You know, I liked that last piece you played: it's got a theme. I like music with a theme, not all them arias and barcarolles."
Works
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"Few composers capture their time and become the iconic voice of their age. Leonard Bernstein found his "voice" in the early 1940s and projected the sound of urban and urbane America from the period of World War II to the anti-war movements of the 1970s and the restoration of freedom in Europe, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet communism."
-Conductor John Mauceri
(Photo by Al Ravenna, 1955; via Wikimedia Commons)
Leonard Bernstein completed his suite of brass pieces on April 8, 1959. They were written for members of the New York Philharmonic and received their premier at Carnegie Hall. The pieces were commissioned by the Juilliard Musical Foundation. This set of pieces is rarely performed as a set and are …
Bernstein's final composition, each of the five movements is dedicated to a choreographer-friend of his.
Facsimile, the second ballet by Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins, was commissioned by the American Ballet Theatre, and the music was composed by Bernstein in the three weeks between the close of the 1946 season at Tanglewood and the opening of the New York City Symphony season. The ballet depi…
A short fanfare for brass and percussion, composed for the 25th Anniversary of the High School of Music and Art in New York City.
A short fanfare for ensemble penned for a gala held in DC on the eve of John F. Kennedy's inauguration.
Bernstein dedicated Halil "to the spirit of Yadin [Tenenbaum] and his fallen brothers.” Tanenbaum was an Israeli flute student killed in his tank close to the Suez Canal during the 1973 war. The title "Halil" is the Hebrew word for flute.
Leonard Bernstein's Music for String Quartet had its premiere performance on November 6, 2021, at Tanglewood's Linde Center, at a gala concert benefit for The Stockbridge Library, Museum & Archives.
Leonard Bernstein's score for the Academy Award-winning On The Waterfront debuted when the film opened in New York City on July 28, 1954. His score for the film received wide popular and critical acclaim, and On The Waterfront won 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Leading Actor (Marlo…
Bernstein composed his Piano Trio for piano, violin, and cello in 1937, while he was attending Harvard University.
Written on the occasion of Karl Boehm's eighty-fifth birthday: "with affection from his admiring colleague," and completed in Munich, 25 August 1979, Bernstein's birthday. The nonsense worlds imply Hassidic vocalizations.
A fanfare for double brass ensemble and percussion, commissioned by and dedicated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in honor of its Centenary in 1969.
The Sonata for Clarinet and Piano was Bernstein’s first published composition. This work reflects the youthful enthusiasm of the time: walking basses, pervasive syncopations and melodic flourishes make this a fun and exciting work.
One of Bernstein's earliest works, composed while he was a student at the Curtis Institute, for violin and piano.
In 1949, Bernstein set a pair of texts by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the first of which, Extinguish My Eyes, was introduced that same year by mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel at Town Hall in New York. It wasn’t until 1963 that she premiered the second song, When My Soul Touches Yours.
Previously unpublished, Bernstein's Variations on an Octatonic Scale was originally composed for recorder and cello in 1988-89 in Key West.