Leonard Bernstein
Bernstein conducting the New York City Symphony (1945) By Fred Palumbo, World Telegram staff photographer - Library of Congress. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c27783, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1273889
The centenary of Leonard Bernstein's birth in 1918 is being celebrated in 2018, and such an occasion is a good time to look back at his extraordinary legacy of recordings. It was not long after his sensational substitution for Bruno Walter in 1943 that a record company signed him up. His earliest recordings were for RCA Victor, and on this week's Classics of the Phonograph—Saturday at 11 am on WILL-FM—we will play some of his early successes.