Purchase this and other timeless New Criterion essays in our hard-copy reprint series. For a time in the 1960s, when Bernstein was Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, and the first American ...

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) was the first great American orchestra conductor, leading the New York Philharmonic, to international acclaim. He composed music for symphonies, choral works, Broadway ...

Leonard Bernstein was a singular American genius. One of the great orchestra conductors of the 20th Century, he was also a composer of hit musicals like West Side Story, as well as symphonies and ...

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the U.S. to receive worldwide acclaim.