Fritz Reiner Videos

Watch as Elim Chan conducts Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” as part of her NY Phil debut on March 7, 2024, featuring NY Phil Concertmaster Frank Huang. The work was also on the program when Chan became the first-ever female winner of the Donatella Flick LSO Conducting Competition in 2014.

Leonard Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He took piano lessons as a boy and attended the Garrison and Boston Latin Schools. At Harvard University, he studied with Walter Piston, Edward Burlingame-Hill, and A. Tillman Merritt, among others. Before graduating in 1939, he made an unofficial conducting debut with his own incidental music to 'The Birds,' and directed and performed in Marc Blitzstein's 'The Cradle Will Rock.' Then at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, he studied piano with Isabella Vengerova, conducting with Fritz Reiner, and orchestration with Randall Thompson.