- Person
- Leonard Bernstein
- Lived
- 1918–1990
- Field
- Music
- From
- American
The story
Leonard Bernstein had a long relationship with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and with the musical life of Central Europe. In 1970 he filmed a celebration of Beethoven's 200th birthday in Vienna that included a performance of the Ninth, and in the late 1970s he conducted a complete Beethoven symphony cycle with the Vienna Philharmonic. In 1979 he had also conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in two charity concerts for Amnesty International.
When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, Bernstein, then 71, wanted to mark the moment with music. He conducted Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in West Berlin on 24 December and then again on Christmas Day at the Konzerthaus in East Berlin. The orchestra was made up of musicians representing the two German states and the four powers that had occupied Berlin after the war: the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France.
For the occasion, Bernstein changed Friedrich Schiller's text in the choral finale, the famous Ode to Joy, replacing Freude, meaning joy, with Freiheit, meaning freedom. He said he was sure Beethoven would have given his blessing. The Christmas Day concert was broadcast live to an estimated 100 million people in more than twenty countries.
His daughter Jamie Bernstein later wrote that the Berlin concert expressed, more clearly than anything else, the belief her father had tried to convey all his life: that if enough hearts opened themselves to great music, there would be no room left in them for evil, greed or hate.
Less than a year later Bernstein's life came to an end. He gave his last concert at Tanglewood in August 1990 and died in New York on 14 October. The Berlin performance is remembered as one of the defining public acts of his life: a Jewish American musician celebrating freedom in the city from which the Nazi regime had once been run, in the weeks after its people had broken through the wall that divided them.
Why it matters
The concert turned a historic political moment into a shared celebration of freedom heard around the world.
About Leonard Bernstein
Conductor & composer; "West Side Story," New York Philharmonic, music educator to a generation through the Young People's Concerts.
More about Leonard Bernstein
- Leonard Bernstein turned a prize into a school programmeWhen Leonard Bernstein won Japan's Praemium Imperiale in 1990, he used the 100,000 dollar prize to start an arts-in-education project that became the Artful Learning programme.
- Leonard Bernstein taught classical music to millions on TVLeonard Bernstein, the first American-born music director of the New York Philharmonic, wrote and hosted 53 televised Young People's Concerts, shown in more than 40 countries.
- Leonard Bernstein brought Mahler's symphonies back to lifeLeonard Bernstein was a critical figure in the modern revival of Gustav Mahler, recording his symphonies and helping make them central to the orchestral repertoire.
- Bernstein's Harvard lectures linked music and languageIn 1973 Leonard Bernstein gave six Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard, The Unanswered Question, applying ideas from linguistics to explain how music communicates.
- Leonard Bernstein founded the Pacific Music Festival in 1990In his final summer, 1990, Leonard Bernstein founded the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan, which has since trained more than 3,200 young musicians.
- Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story reinvented the musicalLeonard Bernstein's score for West Side Story, which opened on Broadway in 1957, fused jazz, Latin rhythms and symphonic technique and is still performed around the world.
- Bernstein's Young People's Concerts taught millions musicFrom 1958 to 1972 Leonard Bernstein presented 53 televised Young People's Concerts, often called the most influential music education series ever produced for television.
- Leonard Bernstein conducted to support Amnesty InternationalLeonard Bernstein gave benefit concerts for Amnesty International in Munich in 1976 and Berlin in 1979, and set up a fund in his wife's name to aid human rights activists.
- Leonard Bernstein was an early champion of AIDS researchLeonard Bernstein took part in one of the earliest AIDS fundraisers in 1983 and later helped raise the first million dollars for amfAR's community-based clinical trials.
- Leonard Bernstein led a Journey for Peace to HiroshimaIn 1985 Leonard Bernstein took the European Community Youth Orchestra on a Journey for Peace tour, performing at the Hiroshima Peace Ceremony on the 40th anniversary of the bombing.
Sources
- Leonard Bernstein Wikipedia
- Leonard Bernstein: Humanitarian Leonard Bernstein Office
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.