The name “Leonard Bernstein” usually raises an image of Bernstein the conductor, the educator, or the speaker. Keep in mind, however, that as a young lad he began to play the piano quite a long time before becoming an orchestral conductor.
Today I share with you his delight as he performs the Piano Concerto #17 by Mozart in both roles.
Mozart composed this concerto in early 1784 and entered it in his catalog on April 12. The first performance was given on June 13 of that year in the Viennese suburb of Döbling.
According to Mozart’s expense book, on May 27, 1784, he purchased a pet starling that learned to whistle the first five measures of the finale of this concerto. Biographers sometimes confuse which came first, the bird or the tune, although since Mozart had already entered the concerto in his catalog on April 12, it seems clear that the music was finished by then and that it was Mozart who taught the tune to the starling and not the other way around.
Here is Leonard Bernstein as both pianist and conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic, playing this amazing music for you:
