Composer of the Week

Bernstein always seems to have been in the right place at the right time. Seven years to the day since meeting his mentor Aaron Copland, he gallantly took the baton at the last minute of the ailing Bruno Walter in a broadcast with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Thus Bernstein was catapulted into the limelight. Donald Macleod also explores his beloved Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and we'll hear 'Prelude, Fugue and Riffs', first performed in Bernstein's second appearance on the television programme 'Omnibus'.