This man was the first American musician to achieve world-wide recognition; known as a conductor, composer, pianist, author and teacher.
Affectionately known to his friends, family and fans as Lenny, he was born Louis B.... in Lawrence, Massachusetts on August 25th, 1918. From an early age he was known as Lenny and changed his name officially to this at age sixteen. He grew up in Boston and studied at the Boston Latin School. After graduating from Harvard in 1939 he continued his studies at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia including conducting with Fritz Reiner. With various musical avenues open to him he chose Curtis, with encouragement from Dimitri Mitropoulos and Aaron Copland.
His summers were spent studying with and as the assistant of Serge Koussevitsky at Tanglewood before being hired in 1943 as Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic by Artur Rodzinski.
On November 19th the same year he made front page headlines by replacing Bruno Walter in a national radio broadcast at the tender age of 25. He only discovered in the morning during a visit to Walter's sick bed, that he was to conduct that same afternoon.
In 1945 he was appointed music director of the New York City Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until 1947. He traveled the world as a conductor. In 1946, he conducted in London and at the International Music Festival in Prague. In 1947, he conducted in Tel Aviv, beginning a relationship with Israel that lasted until his death. In 1953, he was the first American to conduct opera at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan: Cherubini's Medea with Maria Callas. After Serge Koussevitzky died in 1951, he headed the orchestral and conducting departments at Tanglewood, teaching there for many years. He was also visiting music professor and head of the Creative Arts Festivals at Brandeis University in the early 1950s.
Lenny became music director of the New York Philharmonic:
www.newyorkphilharmonic.org . . . in 1958. From then until 1969 he led more concerts with the orchestra than any previous conductor. He subsequently held the lifetime title of laureate conductor, making frequent guest appearances with the orchestra. More than half of his four-hundred-plus recordings were made with the New York Philharmonic.
He was a leading advocate of American composers, particularly Aaron Copland. The two remained close friends for life. As a young pianist Lenny performed Copland's Piano Variations so often he considered the composition his trademark. He programmed and recorded nearly all of the Copland orchestral works, many of them twice. He devoted several televised Young People's Concerts to Copland, and gave the premiere of Copland's Connotations, commissioned for the opening of the Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) at Lincoln Center in 1962.
While Lenny's conducting repertoire encompassed the standard literature, he may be best remembered for his performances and recordings of Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Sibelius and Mahler. Particularly notable were his performances of the Mahler symphonies with the New York Philharmonic in the 1960s. These now-legendary performances reintroduced Mahler's works into the concert repertoire and initiated the restoration of Mahler's reputation as a composer.
As a composer, he created works over a wide range of forms and styles: three symphonies (Jeremiah, Age of Anxiety and Kaddish), the Serenade for Violin and Orchestra, Chichester Psalms for Orchestra and Chorus, three ballets (Fancy Free, Facsimile and Dybbuk), the operas Trouble in Tahiti and A Quiet Place. For the Theatre he wrote On the Town, Wonderful Town, Candide, West Side Story and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Mass, a theatre piece for singers, players and dancers opened the Kennedy Center is Washington D.C. in 1971. Other later compositions included Divertimento for Orchestra, Halil, Songfest, Jubilee Games and Arias and Barcarolles. In 1982 the New York City Opera presented the opera house version of Candide which was brought in a "final" updated form to Scottish Opera by John Mauceri in 1988, the year of Lenny's 70th birthday. Festivals of his work have been presented throughout the world and his theatre works are almost constantly playing.
As a musical educator, he was unparalleled. Through his television shows like Omnibus and Young People's Concerts he brought an appreciation of music to whole generations.
He craved critical success for his "serious" works but only towards the end of his life did he start receiving critical acclaim for these non-theatre works; he mostly always produced tonal pieces, flying in the face of the 20th century critical establishment. It's mostly his theatre works which remain his biggest critical successes. Even these successes were achieved in the face of opposition from some of his musical mentors.
In 1951 he married the Chilean actress and author Felicia Montealegre, fathering three children, Jamie, Alexander and Nina. Felicia died in 1978, shortly after he had left her for another man.
In 1990 he was ordered to retire from conducting by his physicians, only to retire from the world a short time later. He left behind quite an unparalleled modern musical legacy.
