Speaking Volumes: Celebrate 100 years of Leonard Bernstein’s music with these materials
Legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein would have been 100 this month.
Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Mass., and one of his formative influences in his early years was Aaron Copland, who is often referred to as the “Dean of American Music.”
Bernstein is remembered as a composer of such great works as “West Side Story,” a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” re-set in urban New York City.
He was the principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic and other great orchestras on a wide range of works. In addition to musicals such as “West Side Story,” his compositions include three symphonies to smaller chamber works to the innovative musical “Mass,” which can be performed on a theatrical stage or in a concert setting.
His famed “Young People’s Concerts” series was broadcast on television from 1958-72. This series showcased a variety of world music for a young audience, and has inspired musicians and music-lovers alike. Bernstein died in 1990 in New York.
If you want to learn more about Bernstein and are interested in listening to his works and concerts, your library has a variety of materials to offer.
If you’re interested in his works, you should check out “West Side Story/On the Waterfront,” which features a complete recording of the great Broadway musical and a symphonic suite from his music score from “On the Waterfront” (1954), with Marlon Brando.
We also have the film itself as well as the 1961 film of “West Side Story” available on DVD.
Other works you might enjoy are the sound recordings of two of his Broadway musicals. These are “Wonderful Town,” which was telecast in 1958, and “On the Town,” a 1944 musical that was later made into a film by MGM with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in 1949.
There is a wealth of recordings of great classical works conducted by the maestro, from albums of Tchaikovsky (“Symphony No. 5 in E Minor,” “Slavonic March,” and “1812 Overture”), to one on Mozart (“Symphony No. 40 in G Minor” and “Symphony No. 41 in C.” In the capacity of a conductor, he was able to revitalize interest in previously neglected composers such as Gustav Mahler and Charles Ives.
He sparked new interest in Mahler in the early 1960s. We have a recording of Mahler’s “Symphony No. 4 in G Major,” conducted by Bernstein during that period.
If you want to know more about Bernstein and his life, both Humphrey Burton’s “Leonard Bernstein,” and “Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing up Bernstein,” which is a personal memoir by Jamie Bernstein about her father.
Both books delve into the complex and extremely talented conductor and composer who despite having a periodically difficult personal life was also able to enjoy a highly successful career. There is also a collection of fifteen of his lectures for the “Young People’s Concerts” series, “Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts.”
David Breakfield is a reference librarian at the Downtown Central Library. Speaking Volumes, written by Manatee County Public Library System staff members, is published each Sunday in the Bradenton Herald. You can access the library at mymanatee.org/library.