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, the same year he received the Grammy
Lifetime Achievement Award, Leonard Bernstein was still
making personal rsts. Fresh o a conducting tour of London,
Vienna, Amsterdam, and Rome, “America’s Music Teacher”
was invited by the National Symphony Orchestra and its music
director, Bernstein’s longtime friend Mstislav Rostropovich,
to lead their annual Fourth of July concert at the Capitol.
“It’s a very thrilling occasion for me,” he told the
New York
Times
, a er it was announced that the concert would also
be televised nationally on PBS stations. “I’ve conducted the
National [Symphony] many times, but I’ve never conducted
at the Capitol before. It’s something I’m never going to forget.”
In an average year, the concert typically drew a live audience
of over a quarter million, but this was no average year or
program. In addition to the Sousa romp “ e Stars and
Stripes Forever,” Bernstein also led his
Symphonic Dances from
‘West Side Story’
—that same year saw the release of his rst
recording of the groundbreaking musical’s complete score,
which would earn the Best Musical eater Album Grammy
that winter—and his America-celebrating
Songfest
. “I wrote
Songfest
for the Bicentennial, but it doesn’t exactly celebrate the
glory of the nation; rather it celebrates its artists, particularly
its poets,” Bernstein reiterated. “ ree hundred years of
poets are represented. Poetry tells us things no other verbal
medium can.” Four days later,
Bernstein brought the complete
concert—including the NSO, the
vocal soloists, and his children
Nina and Alexander (as readers of
Songfest
’s poems)—to Ravinia for
an encore performance. It would be
his nal appearance at the festival.
[A chamber orchestra version of
Songfest
was premiered at Ravinia
on July ,
. is summer,
Bernstein’s eldest daughter, Jamie,
who was always his “intended
audience” for his famed Young
People’s Concerts, will narrate a
new generation of the program
entirely featuring his works at
Ravinia on July .]
July ,
33 YEARS AGO
ON THIS DATE
JUNE 18 – JULY 8, 2018 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE
33