American musician Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) was, by any measure, an extraordinary talent—as composer, conductor, pianist, and teacher. He came of age in the 1940s, at a time when America was a safe haven for European musicians in flight from the Nazis. Yet Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, not Berlin or Vienna, or even New York City (which became his lifelong home as an adult). His rise to international fame showed, for the first time, that the United States could produce music on par with the finest artists of Europe. Whether composing the irresistibly stylish music in West Side Story (with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Arthur Laurents), or conducting Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 on Christmas Day, 1989, upon the fall of the Berlin Wall (less than a year before his death), Bernstein personified musical excellence.
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