A great composer from Classic to Musical
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The following is an edited version of the biography of Leonard Bernstein as recounted in Wikipedia. The photos are from Getty Images unless stated otherwise and the music included from Youtube
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first American conductor to receive international acclaim. Bernstein was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history" according to music critic Donal Henahan.
Bernstein was the first American-born conductor to lead a major American symphony orchestra. He was music director of the New York Philharmonic and conducted the world's major orchestras, generating a significant legacy of audio and video recordings. Bernstein was also a critical figure in the modern revival of the music of Gustav Mahler, in whose music he was most passionately interested. A skilled pianist, Bernstein often conducted piano concertos from the keyboard. He was the first conductor to share and explore classical music on television with a mass audience through dozens of national and international broadcasts, including Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic.
As a composer, Bernstein wrote in many genres, including symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music, and pieces for the piano. His best-known work is the Broadway musical West Side Story, which continues to be regularly performed worldwide, and has been adapted into two (1961 and 2021) feature films. Bernstein's works include three symphonies, Serenade after Plato's "Symposium" , and Chichester Psalms (1965), the original score for the Elia Kazan drama film On the Waterfront (1954), and theater works including On the Town (1944), Wonderful Town (1953), Candide (1956), and his Mas
A lifelong humanitarian, Bernstein worked in support of civil rights, protested against the Vietnam War, advocated nuclear disarmament, raised money for HIV/AIDS research and awareness, and engaged in multiple international initiatives for human rights and world peace. He conducted Mahler's Resurrection Symphony to mark the death of president John F. Kennedy and in Israel at a world famous concert, Hatikvah on Mt. Scopus, after the 1967 war. The sequence of events was preserved for posterity in a documentary entitled Journey to Jerusalem. At the end of his life, Bernstein conducted a historic performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall.
1918–1934: Early life and family
Born Louis Bernstein in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Bernstein was the son of Jewish parents, Jennie (née Resnick) and Samuel Joseph Bernstein, both of whom immigrated to the United States from Rivne (now in Ukraine). His grandmother insisted that his first name be Louis, but his parents always called him Leonard. Bernstein legally changed his name to Leonard when he was 18, shortly after his grandmother’s death. To his friends and many others, Bernstein was simply known as “Lenny”
Bernstein’s father was the owner of The Samuel Bernstein Hair and Beauty Supply Company. It held the New England franchise for the Frederick’s Permanent Wave Machine, the immense popularity of which helped Sam get his family through the Great Depression.
In Bernstein’s early youth, his only exposure to music was the household radio and music on Friday nights at Congregation Mishkan Tefila in Roxbury, Massachusetts. When Bernstein was ten years old, Samuel’s sister Clara deposited her upright piano at her brother’s house. Bernstein began teaching himself piano and music theory, and was soon clamoring for lessons. He had a variety of piano teachers in his youth, including Helen Coates, who later became his secretary.
In the summers, the Bernstein family would go to their vacation home in Sharon, Massachusetts, where young Leonard conscripted all the neighborhood children to put on shows ranging from Bizet‘s ‘’Carmen‘’ to Gilbert and Sullivan‘s ‘’The Pirates of Penzance‘’. He would often play entire operas or Beethoven symphonies with his younger sister, Shirley. Leonard’s youngest sibling, Burton, was born in 1932, 13 years after Leonard. Despite the large age differences, the three siblings remained close their entire lives.
Sam was initially opposed to young Leonard’s interest in music and attempted to discourage his son’s interest by refusing to pay for his piano lessons. Leonard then took to giving lessons to young people in his neighborhood. One of his students, Sid Ramin, became Bernstein’s most frequent orchestrator and lifelong beloved friend.
Sam took his son to orchestral concerts in his teenage years and eventually supported his music education. In May 1932, Leonard attended his first orchestral concert with the Boston Pops Orchestra conducted by Arthur Fiedler. Bernstein recalled, “To me, in those days, the Pops was heaven itself … I thought … it was the supreme achievement of the human race. It was at this concert that Bernstein first heard Ravel's Boléro, which made a tremendous impression on him.
Another strong musical influence was George Gershwin. Bernstein was a counselor at a summer camp when news came over the radio of Gershwin’s death. In the mess hall, a shaken Bernstein demanded a moment of silence, and then played Gershwin’s second Prelude as a memorial
On March 30, 1932, Bernstein played Brahms‘s Rhapsody in G minor at his first public piano performance in Susan Williams’s studio recital at the New England Conservatory. Two years later, he made his solo debut with orchestra in Grieg‘s Piano Concerto in A minor with the Boston Public School Orchestra.
1935–1940: College years
Bernstein's first two education environments were both public schools: the William Lloyd Garrison School, followed by the prestigious Boston Latin School, for which Bernstein and classmate Lawrence F. Ebb wrote the Class Song.
Harvard University
In 1935, Bernstein enrolled at Harvard College, where he studied music with, among others, Edward Burlingame Hill and Walter Piston. Bernstein's first extant composition, Psalm 148, set for voice and piano, is dated 1935. He majored in music with a final year thesis titled "The Absorption of Race Elements into American Music" (1939; reproduced in his book Findings). One of Bernstein's intellectual influences at Harvard was the aesthetics Professor David Prall, whose multidisciplinary outlook on the arts inspired Bernstein for the rest of his life.
One of Bernstein's friends at Harvard was future philosopher Donald Davidson, with whom Bernstein played piano duets. Bernstein wrote and conducted the musical score for the production Davidson mounted of Aristophanes' play The Birds, performed in the original Greek. Bernstein recycled some of this music in future works. While a student, Bernstein was briefly an accompanist for the Harvard Glee Club as well as an unpaid pianist for Harvard Film Society's silent film presentations.
Bernstein mounted a student production of The Cradle Will Rock, directing its action from the piano as the composer Marc Blitzstein had done at the infamous premiere. Blitzstein, who attended the performance, subsequently became a close friend and mentor to Bernstein. As a sophomore at Harvard, Bernstein met the conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos. Mitropoulos's charisma and power as a musician were major influences on Bernstein's eventual decision to become a conductor. Mitropoulos invited Bernstein to come to Minneapolis for the 1940–41 season to be his assistant, but the plan fell through because of union issues. In 1937, Bernstein sat next to Aaron Copland at a dance recital at Town Hall in New York City. Copland invited Bernstein to his birthday party afterwards, where Bernstein impressed the guests by playing Copland's challenging Piano Variations, a work Bernstein loved. Although he was never a formal student of Copland's, Bernstein would regularly seek his advice, often citing him as his "only real composition teacher".[34] Bernstein graduated from Harvard in 1939 with a Bachelor of Arts cum laude.
Curtis Institute of Music
After graduating from Harvard, Bernstein enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. At Curtis, Bernstein studied conducting with Fritz Reiner (who anecdotally is said to have given Bernstein the only "A" grade he ever awarded); piano with Isabelle Vengerova; orchestration with Randall Thompson; counterpoint with Richard Stöhr; and score reading with Renée Longy Miquelle In 1940, Bernstein attended the inaugural year of the Tanglewood Music Center (then called the Berkshire Music Center) at the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home.[36] Bernstein studied conducting with the BSO's music director, Serge Koussevitzky, who became a profound lifelong inspiration to Bernstein.[37] He became Koussevitzky's conducting assistant at Tanglewood[38] and later dedicated his Symphony No. 2: The Age of Anxiety to his beloved mentor. ] One of Bernstein's classmates, both at Curtis and at Tanglewood, was Lukas Foss, who remained a lifelong friend and colleague. Bernstein returned to Tanglewood nearly every summer for the rest of his life to teach and conduct the young music students.
Career
1940s: Rise to prominence
Soon after he left Curtis, Bernstein moved to New York City where he lived in various apartments in Manhattan. Bernstein supported himself by coaching singers, teaching piano, and playing the piano for dance classes in Carnegie Hall. He found work with Harms-Witmark, transcribing jazz and pop music and publishing his work under the pseudonym "Lenny Amber". (Bernstein means "amber" in German.)
Leonard Bernstein and Benny Goodman
Bernstein briefly shared an apartment in Greenwich Village with his friend Adolph Green. Green was then part of a satirical music troupe called The Revuers, featuring Betty Comden and Judy Holliday. With Bernstein sometimes providing piano accompaniment, The Revuers often performed at the legendary jazz club the Village Vanguard.
On April 21, 1942, Bernstein performed the premiere of his first published work, Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, with clarinetist David Glazer at the Institute of Modern Art in Boston.
New York Philharmonic conducting debut
Bernstein would later make his New York Philharmonic conducting debut. On November 14, 1943, having recently been appointed assistant conductor to Artur Rodziński of the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein made his major conducting debut at short notice—and without any rehearsal—after guest conductor Bruno Walter came down with the flu The challenging program included works by Robert Schumann, Miklós Rózsa, Richard Wagner, and Richard Strauss. ]
The next day, The New York Times carried the story on its front page and remarked in an editorial, "It's a good American success story. The warm, friendly triumph of it filled Carnegie Hall and spread far over the air waves. Many newspapers throughout the country carried the story, which, in combination with the concert's live national CBS Radio Network broadcast, propelled Bernstein to instant fame. Over the next two years, Bernstein made conducting debuts with ten different orchestras in the United States and Canada, greatly broadening his repertoire and initiating a lifelong frequent practice of conducting concertos from the piano.
On January 28, 1944, Bernstein conducted the premiere of his Symphony No. 1: Jeremiah with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra with Jennie Tourel as soloist.[citation needed] In the fall of 1943, Bernstein and Jerome Robbins began work on their first collaboration, Fancy Free, a ballet about three young sailors on leave in wartime New York City. Fancy Free premiered on April 18, 1944, with the Ballet Theatre (now the American Ballet Theatre) at the old Metropolitan Opera House, with scenery by Oliver Smith and costumes by Kermit Love.[48]
Bernstein and Robbins decided to expand the ballet into a musical and invited Comden and Green to write the book and lyrics. On the Town opened on Broadway's Adelphi Theatre on December 28, 1944. The show resonated with audiences during World War II, and it broke race barriers on Broadway: Japanese-American dancer Sono Osato in a leading role; a multiracial cast dancing as mixed race couples; and a Black concertmaster, Everett Lee, who eventually took over as music director of the show. On the Town became an MGM motion picture in 1949, starring Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin as the three sailors. Only part of Bernstein's score was used in the film and additional songs were provided by Roger Edens.
From 1945 to 1947, Bernstein was the music director of the New York City Symphony, which had been founded the previous year by the conductor Leopold Stokowski. The orchestra (with support from Mayor Fiorello La Guardia) had modern programs and affordable tickets. In 1946, Bernstein made his overseas debut with the Czech Philharmonic in Prague. He also recorded Ravel's Piano Concerto in G as soloist and conductor with the Philharmonia Orchestra. On July 4, 1946, Bernstein conducted the European premiere of Fancy Free with the Ballet Theatre at the Royal Opera House in London. That same year Bernstein conducted opera professionally for the first time at Tanglewood with the American premiere of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes, which was commissioned by Koussevitzky. That same year, Arturo Toscanini invited Bernstein to guest conduct two concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, one of which featured Bernstein as soloist in Ravel's Piano Concerto in G.
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, television debut and Tanglewood
In 1947, Bernstein conducted in Tel Aviv for the first time, beginning a lifelong association with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, then known as the Palestine Symphony Orchestra. The next year, he conducted an open-air concert for Israeli troops at Beersheba in the middle of the desert during the Arab-Israeli war. In 1957, he conducted the inaugural concert of the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv. In 1967, he conducted a concert on Mount Scopus to commemorate the Reunification of Jerusalem, featuring Mahler's Symphony No. 2 and Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto with soloist Isaac Stern. The city of Tel Aviv added his name to the Habima Square (Orchestra Plaza) in the center of the city.
On December 10, 1949, Bernstein made his first television appearance as conductor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. The concert, which included an address by Eleanor Roosevelt, celebrated the first anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly's ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and included the premiere of Aaron Copland's "Preamble" with Sir Laurence Olivier narrating text from the UN Charter. The concert was televised by NBC Television Network. In April 1949, Bernstein performed as piano soloist in the world premiere of his Symphony No. 2: The Age of Anxiety with Koussevitzy conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Later that year, Bernstein conducted the world premiere of the Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Part of the rehearsal for the concert was recorded and released by the orchestra. When Koussevitzky died in 1951, Bernstein became head of the orchestra and conducting departments at Tanglewood.
1950s: Career expansion and West Side Story
The 1950s comprised among the most active years of Bernstein's career. He created five new works for the Broadway stage, composed several symphonic works and an iconic film score, and was appointed music director of the New York Philharmonic with whom he toured the world, including concerts behind the Iron Curtain. Bernstein also harnessed the power of television to expand his educational reach, and he married and started a family.
In 1950, Bernstein composed incidental music for a Broadway production of J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan. The production, which opened on Broadway on April 24, 1950, starred Jean Arthur as Peter Pan and Boris Karloff in the dual roles of George Darling and Captain Hook. The show ran for 321 performances. In 1951, Bernstein composed Trouble in Tahiti, a one-act opera in seven scenes with an English libretto by the composer. The opera portrays the troubled marriage of a couple whose idyllic suburban post-war environment belies their inner turmoi Ironically, Bernstein wrote most of the opera while on his honeymoon in Mexico with his wife, Felicia Montealegre. Bernstein was a visiting music professor at Brandeis University from 1951 to 1956. In 1952, he created the Brandeis Festival of the Creative Arts, where he conducted the premiere of Trouble in Tahiti on June 12 of that year. The NBC Opera Theatre subsequently presented the opera on television in November 1952. It opened on Broadway at the Playhouse Theatre on April 19, 1955, and ran for six weeks. Three decades later, Bernstein wrote a second opera, A Quiet Place, which picked up the story and characters of Trouble in Tahiti in a later period.
Wonderful Town
In 1953, Bernstein wrote the score for the musical Wonderful Town on very short notice, with a book by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The musical tells the story of two sisters from Ohio who move to New York City and seek success from their squalid basement apartment in Greenwich Village. Wonderful Town opened on Broadway on February 25, 1953, at the Winter Garden Theatre, starring Rosalind Russell in the role of Ruth Sherwood, Edie Adams as Eileen Sherwood, and George Gaynes as Robert Baker. It won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Actress.
Candide
In the three years leading up to Bernstein's appointment as music director of the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein was simultaneously working on the scores for two Broadway shows. The first of the two was the operetta-style musical Candide. Lillian Hellman originally brought Bernstein her idea of adapting Voltaire's novella. The original collaborators on the show were book writer John Latouche and lyricist Richard Wilbur. Candide opened on Broadway on December 1, 1956, at the Martin Beck Theatre, in a production directed by Tyrone Guthrie. Anxious about the parallels Hellman had deliberately drawn between Voltaire's story and the ongoing hearings conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Guthrie persuaded the collaborators to cut their most incendiary sections prior to opening night. While the production was a box office disaster, running for only two months for a total of 73 performances, the cast album became a cult classic, which kept Bernstein's score alive. There have been several revivals, with modifications to improve the book. The elements of the music that have remained best known and performed over the decades are the Overture, which quickly became one of the most frequently performed orchestral compositions by a 20th century American composer; the coloratura aria "Glitter and Be Gay", which Barbara Cook sang in the original production; and the grand finale "Make Our Garden Grow".
West Side Story
The other musical Bernstein was writing simultaneously with Candide was West Side Story. Bernstein collaborated with director and choreographer Jerome Robbins, book writer Arthur Laurents, and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. The story is an updated retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, set in the mid-1950s in the slums of New York City's Upper West Side. The Romeo character, Tony, is affiliated with the Jets gang, who are of white Northern European descent. The Juliet character is Maria, who is connected to the Sharks gang, recently arrived immigrants from Puerto Rico.[65] The original Broadway production opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on September 26, 1957, and ran 732 performances. Robbins won the Tony Award for Best Choreographer, and Oliver Smith won the Tony for Best Scenic Designer.
Bernstein's score for West Side Story blends "jazz, Latin rhythms, symphonic sweep and musical-comedy conventions in groundbreaking ways for Broadway". It was orchestrated by Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal following detailed instructions from Bernstein. The dark theme, sophisticated music, extended dance scenes, and focus on social problems marked a turning point in musical theatre.
In 1960, Bernstein prepared a suite of orchestral music from the show, titled Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, which continues to be popular with orchestras worldwide. A 1961 United Artists film adaptation, directed by Robert Wise and Robbins and starred Natalie Wood as Maria and Richard Beymer as Tony. The film won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture and a ground-breaking Best Supporting Actress award for Puerto Rican-born Rita Moreno playing the role of Anita. A new film adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg opened in 2021.
In addition to Bernstein's compositional activity for the stage, he wrote a symphonic work, Serenade after Plato's "Symposium"; the score On the Waterfront; and Prelude, Fugue and Riffs, composed for jazz big band and solo clarinet. In 1953, Bernstein became the first American conductor to appear at La Scala in Milan, conducting Cherubini's Medea, with Maria Callas in the title role. Callas and Bernstein reunited at La Scala to perform Bellini's La sonnambula in 1955. On November 14, 1954, Bernstein presented the first of his television lectures for the CBS Television Network arts program Omnibus. The live lecture, entitled "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony", involved Bernstein explaining the symphony's first movement with the aid of musicians from the "Symphony of the Air" (formerly NBC Symphony Orchestra). The program featured manuscripts from Beethoven's own hand, as well as a giant painting of the first page of the score covering the studio floor. Six more Omnibus lectures followed from 1955 to 1961 (later on ABC and then NBC) covering a broad range of topics: jazz, conducting, American musical comedy, modern music, J.S. Bach, and grand opera.
Kaddish and Chichester Psalms Due to his commitment to the New York Philharmonic and his many other activities, Bernstein had little time for composition during the 1960s, composing just two major works. His Symphony No. 3: Kaddish was written in 1963; Bernstein dedicated the work: "To the Beloved Memory of John F. Kennedy." The work features a large orchestra, a full choir, a boys' choir, a soprano soloist, and a narrator. "Kaddish" refers to the Jewish prayer recited for the dead. Bernstein wrote the text of the narration himself; his wife, Felicia Montealegre, narrated the US premiere of the work.
In 1965, Bernstein took a sabbatical year from the New York Philharmonic in order to concentrate on composition, during which he composed Chichester Psalms. Commissioned by the Dean of Chichester Cathedral, Walter Hussey, the work premiered at Philharmonic Hall in New York City on July 15, 1965, conducted by Bernstein himself, and subsequently at Chichester Cathedral, conducted by John Birch. For his text, Bernstein chose excerpts from the Book of Psalms in the original Hebrew. In 2018, Bernstein's Centennial year, Chichester Psalms was cited as the 5th-most performed concert work worldwide.
Final concert at Tanglewood
Bernstein conducted his last concert on August 19, 1990 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood. He led Benjamin Britten's Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. The program also included Bernstein's own Arias and Barcarolles in a new orchestration by Bright Sheng. However, poor health prevented Bernstein from preparing it, and Tanglewood Conducting Fellow Carl St. Clair was engaged to conduct the work in his stead.
Bernstein suffered a coughing fit during the third movement of the Beethoven, but continued to conduct the piece to its conclusion, leaving the stage during the ovation, appearing exhausted and in pain. The concert was later issued on CD as Leonard Bernstein – The Final Concert by Deutsche Grammophon.
Personal Life
Bernstein in Amsterdam, 1968
Leonard Bernstein had two younger siblings, Shirley and Burton. The three children lived with their parents, Samuel and Jennie, in the suburbs of Boston, MA, in a community of mostly Eastern European Jewish immigrants.
Bernstein had asthma, and the condition kept him from serving in the military during World War II.[
Bernstein married actress Felicia Montealegre Cohn on September 9, 1951. They had three children, Jamie, Alexander, and Nina. The Bernstein family lived in New York City and Fairfield, Connecticut, and maintained a close-knit atmosphere surrounded by extended family and friends. Bernstein had a studio with a piano in every place he lived. The contents of his studio in Fairfield, Connecticut, are currently housed at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
Throughout his life, Bernstein had affairs with both women and men. Bernstein sought advice in April 1943 from Aaron Copland about living as a gay man in the public eye, suggesting he could resolve the dilemma by marrying his then "girl-friend ... my dentist's daughter" a notion he brought up again in a letter to David Oppenheim in July of that year. Adolph Green asked Bernstein about the status of this idea in a letter a few months later. In a private letter written after their marriage, Felicia acknowledged her husband's sexual orientation. She wrote him: "You are a homosexual and may never change — you don't admit to the possibility of a double life, but if your peace of mind, your health, your whole nervous system depend on a certain sexual pattern what can you do?”
In 1976, Bernstein left Felicia for a period to live in Northern California with Tom Cothran, a music scholar who had assisted him on research for the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures that Bernstein delivered at Harvard.[168][169] The following year, Felicia was diagnosed with lung cancer. Bernstein moved back in with her and cared for her until her death on June 16, 1978.
Bernstein continued to have relationships with men until his death on October 14, 1990.
When he was not composing and conducting, Bernstein enjoyed skiing, playing tennis, and engaging in all manner of word games, especially cutthroat anagrams.
Death and legacy
Bernstein announced his retirement from conducting on October 9, 1990. He died five days later at the age of 72, in his New York apartment at The Dakota, of a heart attack brought on by mesothelioma. A longtime heavy smoker, Bernstein had emphysema from his mid-50s. On the day of his funeral procession through the streets of Manhattan, construction workers removed their hats and waved, calling out "Goodbye, Lenny". Bernstein is buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, next to his wife and with a copy of Mahler's Fifth Symphony[175] opened to the famous Adagietto lying across his heart.
On August 25, 2018 (his 100th birthday), Bernstein was honored with a Google Doodle. The Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles created an exhibition titled Leonard Bernstein at 100 for his centennial.
Bernstein sought to make music both intelligible and enjoyable to all. Through his educational efforts, including several books and the creation of two major international music festivals, Bernstein influenced several generations of young musicians. Bradley Cooper's drama film Maestro (2023) chronicles the relationship between Bernstein (played by Cooper) and his wife, Felicia Montealegre (played by Carey Mulligan). Produced by Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese,[180] the film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival. As the Spotlight Gala feature of the 61st New York Film Festival,[181] it was the first film presentation at the recently renovated David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center, which was also where Bernstein had conducted the New York Philharmonic from its opening as Philharmonic Hall in 1962 until 1969.
Social activism & humanitarian efforts
Since earliest adulthood, Bernstein was committed to furthering social change and making the world a better place. Throughout his life, Bernstein fought for a variety of political and humanitarian causes, from the civil rights movement to the Vietnam War protests to nuclear disarmament to advocacy during the AIDS crisis.
Bernstein's first public efforts for social change became apparent in 1939 when, as a college student at Harvard, he organized and led a performance of Marc Blitzstein;s recently banned musical, The Cradle Will Rock, about the struggles of the working class.
FBI file
Bernstein was involved in numerous left-wing causes and organizations since the 1940s, at which time the FBI began its decades-long monitoring of Bernstein's activities "for his ties to communist organizations." In the 1980s, through the Freedom of Information Act, he was able to view his FBI file, which was over 800 pages long.[188] In the early 1950s, he was briefly blacklisted by the United States Department of State and CBS, but he was never asked to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
"Radical Chic"
On January 14, 1970, Bernstein and his wife Felicia held an event at their Manhattan apartment seeking to raise awareness and funds for the defense of members of the Black Panther Party, known as the Panther 21. The New York Times initially covered the gathering in its society section, but later published an editorial harshly unfavorable to Bernstein.
The story became widely publicized, climaxing in June of that year with the appearance of "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's", a cover story by journalist Tom Wolfe in New York Magazine. The article led to the popularization of the pejorative term "radical chic". Bernstein and Felicia received hate mail, and their building was picketed by Jewish Defense League protesters. Bernstein's FBI file later revealed that the Bureau had generated the letters, and had implanted agents to make the protests look more substantial.
Rostropovich and the Soviet Union
Bernstein played an instrumental role in the release of renowned cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich from the USSR in 1974. Rostropovich, a strong believer in free speech and democracy, had been officially held in disgrace; his concerts and tours both at home and abroad cancelled, and in 1972 he was prohibited to travel outside of the Soviet Union. During a trip to the USSR in 1974, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy and his wife Joan, urged by Bernstein and others in the cultural sphere, mentioned Rostropovich's situation to Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Union Communist Party Leader. Two days later, Rostropovich was granted his exit visa.
Nuclear disarmament
Bernstein was a committed and outspoken supporter of nuclear disarmament.[200] In 1980, he gave a commencement speech at Johns Hopkins University to the graduating class warning of the dangers of nuclear proliferation. In 1983, he dedicated the activities surrounding his 65th birthday to the issue of nuclear disarmament. In 1985, he brought the European Community Youth Orchestra on a "Journey for Peace" tour across Europe and Japan, performing at the Hiroshima Peace Ceremony to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the bombing.
Philanthropy
Bernstein funded a variety of fellowships, funds, and scholarships including ones at the Tanglewood Music Center, Jacobs School of Music,[204] Brandeis University and the ASCAP Foundation. Several of these funds were named for his late wife Felicia Montealegre, including scholarships at the Juilliard School, Columbia University School of the Arts, New York University Tisch School of the Arts, ] and the Felicia Montealegre Bernstein Fund of Amnesty International USA
Bernstein had a lifelong interest in integrating the arts into general education. When he won the Japan Art Association's Praemium Imperiale award in 1990, Bernstein used the $100,000 prize money to initiate a project in Nashville, Tennessee that would eventually lead to the current nationwide teaching model known as Artful Learning.