Leonard Bernstein has been played on NTS over 50 times, featured on 51 episodes and was first played on 11 December 2014.

Leonard Bernstein, a unique source of creative energy in America’s music throughout his entire adult lifetime, was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on August 25, 1918.

He was given piano lessons as a boy and had his pre-college education at the Garrison and Boston Latin schools. Going on to Harvard University, he worked with Walter Piston, Edward Burlingame Hill, and A. Tillman Merritt, among others. By the time of his graduation, in 1939, he had made an unofficial conducting debut (his own incidental music to…