Young People's Concerts

The Young People's Concerts at the New York Philharmonic are the longest-running series of family concerts of classical music in the world.

Genesis

They began in 1924 under the direction of "Uncle" Ernest Schelling. Earlier Family Matinees had begun as far back as 1885 under conductor Theodore Thomas. Josef Stránský developed them further under the name Young People's Concerts beginning in 1914. They have run uninterrupted under this name since 1926. Ernest Schelling led his first Young People's Concert on March 27, 1924. By combining musical performances of the Philharmonic with lectures, Schelling set the stage for the program. During that time period, the show went on the road multiple times, travelling to Philadelphia, London, Rotterdam, and Los Angeles.^{[citation needed]}

Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts on CBS 1958-1972

Leonard Bernstein brought the Young People's Concerts to a new level of attention when he arrived as conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1958. Crucially, the first performance with him as music director, on January 18, 1958 at Carnegie Hall, New York, was the first of these concerts to be televised. Beginning in 1962, the Young People's Concerts became the first series of concerts ever televised from Lincoln Center. Bernstein conducted a total of 53 such performances, all of which were telecast on CBS and syndicated in over 40 countries. Bernstein continued the concerts even during a sabbatical season from the orchestra 1964-65. Although Bernstein left as music director in 1969, he continued to lead the Young People's Concerts as Conductor Emeritus until 1972. Bernstein's performances inspired generations of musicians and music-lovers, and twenty-five of them are now available on DVD. However, the airing of the program was halted in March of 1972, with a final Young People's Concert concentrating on Gustav Holst's The Planets.

Originally broadcast on Saturday (episodes 1-7) and Sunday (episodes 8-15), the concerts moved to prime time for episodes 16-40. This was likely a CBS counter to Newton N. Minow’s speech referring to television as a vast wasteland. The series returned to Sunday afternoons (episodes 41-53). The concerts were also syndicated to forty countries.

Episode #	Title	Original Airdate	Performers
1	What Does Music Mean?	18 January 1958
2	What is American Music?	1 February 1958
3	What is Orchestration?	8 March 1958
4	What Makes Music Symphonic?	13 December 1958
5	What is Classical Music?	24 January 1959
6	Humor in Music	28 February 1959
7	What is a Concerto?	28 March 1959	John Corigliano Sr.; John Wummer; John Bernstein
8	Who is Gustav Mahler	7 February 1960	Reri Grist; Helen Raab; William Lewis
9	Young Performers No. 1	6 March 1960	Daniel Domb; Kenneth Schermerhorn; Barry Finclair; Stefan B. Mengelberg; Alexandra Wager
10	Unusual Instruments of Present, Past, and Future	27 March 1960	New York Pro Musica; Noah Greenberg; Vladimir Ussachevsky; Anita Darian
11	The Second Hurricane	24 April 1960	The High School of Music & Art
12	Overtures and Preludes	8 January 1961
13	Aaron Copland Birthday Party	12 February 1961	Aaron Copland; William Warfield
14	Young Performers No. 2	19 March 1961	Lynn Harrell; Elyakum Shapirra; Jung-Ja Kim; Russell Stanger; Veronica Tyler; Gregory Millar; Henry Chapin
15	Folk Music in the Concert Hall	9 April 1961	Marni Nixon
16	What is Impressionism?	23 November 1961
17	The Road to Paris	18 January 1962	Zara Nelsova
18	Happy Birthday, Igor Stravinsky	26 March 1962
19	Young Performers No. 3	14 April 1962	Seiji Ozawa; Gary Karr; Maurice Peress; John Canarina; Ruth & Naomi Segal; Paula Robison; Paul Green; Tony Cirone; David Hopper
20	The Sound of a Hall	21 November 1962	John Corigliano, Sr.; Frank Gullino; Joseph Bernstein; William Dembinsky
21	What is a Melody?	21 December 1962
22	Young Performers No. 4	15 January 1963	Joan Weiner; Yuri Krasnopolsky; Claudia Hoca; Zoltán Rozsnyai; Pamela Paul; Serge Fournier; André Watts
23	The Latin American Spirit	8 March 1963	Netania Davrath
24	A Tribute to Teachers	29 November 1963
25	Young Performers No. 5	23 December 1963	Heidi Lehwalder; Amos Eisenberg; Weldon Berry, Jr.; Claudio Abbado; Shulamith Ran; Pedro Calderon; Stephen E. Kates; Zdeněk Košler
26	The Genius of Paul Hindemith	23 February 1964
27	Jazz in the Concert Hall	11 March 1964	Gunther Schuller; Aaron Copland
28	What is Sonata Form?	6 November 1964	Veronica Tyler
29	Farewell to Nationalism	30 November 1964
30	Young Performers No. 6	28 January 1965	Patricia Michaelian; James Boswell
31	A Tribute to Sibelius	19 February 1965	Sergiu Luca
32	Musical Atoms: A Study of Intervals	29 November 1965
33	The Sound of an Orchestra	14 December 1965
34	A Birthday Tribute to Shostakovich	5 January 1966
35	Young Performers No. 7	22 February 1966	Paul Schoenfeld; David Oei; Horacio Gutiérrez; James DePreist; Jacques Houtmann; Edo de Waart
36	What Is a Mode?	23 November 1966
37	Young Performers No. 8	27 January 1967	Elmar Oliveira; Mark Salkind; Fred Alston; Donald Green; Juan Pablo Izquierdo; Sylvia Caduff; George Reid; Young Uck Kim
38	Charles Ives: American Pioneer	23 February 1967
39	Alumni Reunion	19 April 1967	Stephen E. Kates; Veronica Tyler; André Watts
40	A Toast to Vienna in ¾ Time		Christa Ludwig; Walter Berry
41	Forever Beethoven	28 January 1968	Joseph Kalichstein; Paul Capolongo
42	Young Performers No. 9	31 March 1968	Lawrence Foster; Alois Springer; Martin and Steven Vann; Helen Quach
43	Quiz-Concert: How Musical Are You?	26 May 1968
44	Fantastic Variations (Don Quixote)	25 December 1968
45	Bach Transmogrified	27 April 1969
46	Berlioz Takes a Trip	25 May 1969
47	Two Ballet Birds	14 September 1969
48	Fidelio: A Celebration of Life	29 March 1970	Forest Warren; Anita Darian; Howard Ross; David Cumberland
49	The Anatomy of a Symphony Orchestra	24 May 1970
50	A Copland Celebration	27 December 1970	Stanley Drucker
51	Thus Spoke Richard Strauss	4 April 1971
52	Liszt and the Devil	13 February 1972
53	Holst: The Planets	26 March 1972

Young People’s Concerts on DVD

Kultur International Films released a nine DVD set with 25 of the 53 concerts in September 2004.

Young People's Concerts After Bernstein

Each season, several different conductors led the Young People's Concerts. Michael Tilson Thomas became a regular during the 1970s, but other conductors included figures like Erich Leinsdorf, Pierre Boulez, Igor Buketoff, Zubin Mehta, Aaron Copland, and later Kurt Masur, Leonard Slatkin, and André Previn.

Currently, the New York Philharmonic presents four Young People's Concerts each season, in addition to concerts on tour, most recently in Hong Kong on February 17, 2008. In New York, Delta David Gier is conductor and host - the first person to lead all such concerts in a season since 1952. Each season is themed as a unit - for instance the four Ages of Music - and the live performance is complemented by live images projected on a large screen, in addition to actors, dancers, and singers who help bring themes to life. Noted playwright Tom Dulack scripts the concerts. Each concert is preceded by Kidzone Live, an interactive music fair engaging over 1000 children in the themes of the concert with hands-on activities on all four level of the lobby of Avery Fisher Hall.

In 2005, the New York Philharmonic initiated a sister series called Very Young People's Concerts, performed by an ensemble of eight to ten musicians of the Philharmonic at Merkin Concert Hall. Children arrive for musical games played with individual musicians, then sit down for a 30-minute concert featuring a story set to a major piece of music, like one of The Four Seasons of Vivaldi, or a portion of Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F. Children try small string instruments before they leave. The Very Young People's Concerts also sell out on subscription.

Sources

• Crooks, John. “Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts: A Birthday Tribute to Shostakovich in Context” [1]
• Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts. Edited by Jack Gottlieb. New York: Doubleday, 1970.
• Olsen, Kathleen A. The Contributions of Leonard Bernstein to Music Education and Audience Development. Master’s Thesis from The Crane School of Music, Potsdam New York, 2009. [2]
• Schonberg, Harold C. “Bernstein Offers a Lesson in Music”, New York Times, 19 January 1958, page 81.

External links

• Bernstein's Studio, which includes some audio clips
• Library of Congress, including scripts of the Bernstein-led performances.