Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein became famous in a single afternoon. In November 1943, aged twenty-five, the assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic was called at the last minute to replace an ailing Bruno Walter, and led the concert, broadcast nationwide, without a rehearsal. The reviews landed him on the front page of the New York Times.

Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants and educated at Harvard, he spent his life refusing to choose between worlds. He was music director of the New York Philharmonic, wrote Broadway shows including West Side Story, composed symphonies and sacred works, and taught a generation of Americans about music through his televised Young People's Concerts.

Start with West Side Story, in any form you like, then the Chichester Psalms, a short choral work in Hebrew that shows his concert-hall and theater selves meeting in the middle.