Leonard Bernstein

About the Author

Humphrey Burton was a friend and professional colleague of Leonard Bernstein for thirty years. He read music and history at Cambridge University and joined the BBC in 1955, becoming its first head of music and arts programmes a decade later, and in 1978 founding and hosting the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition. He retired from management at the age of 50 and has since worked freelance as an impresario and prize-winning director of filmed operas, concerts and documentaries in Europe and the USA In Los Angeles he was guest director of the Hollywood Bowl and at Tanglewood, Massachusetts he produced Bernstein's elaborate '70th Birthday Bash'. He directed almost two hundred music films with Bernstein: this unrivalled closeness made him the ideal choice as biographer. He has also written biographies of two other musician friends, Yehudi Menuhin (Faber, 2000) and William Walton (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Burton moved to Suffolk in 2001; he is president of the Aldeburgh Music Club and lectures regularly at the festival. In the 21st century he has developed another enjoyable career as a speaker on river and ocean cruises. He remains a keen pianist, preferably as the secondo partner in duets which have been his favourite pastime since childhood.