Bernstein celebrates festive freedom in East Berlin

"I believe that Beethoven would have given us his blessing. Let freedom live!"

- Terry Blain

CHRISTMAS 1989

'I am experiencing a historical moment, incomparable with others in my long, long life.' Leonard Bernstein was 71 when he spoke those words, six weeks after elated crowds began tearing down the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989.

For 28 years the wall had split the city in two, preventing those living in communist-controlled East Berlin crossing to West Berlin, where the democratic values of the Federal Republic of Germany held sway. But communism in eastern Europe had begun to crumble, and the convulsive shockwaves were causing the long-impregnable barriers between the two parts of a divided Germany, both ideological and physical, to crumble too.

Ever a master of the dramatic moment, Bernstein instinctively grasped that he, an elder statesman of international music, had a unique contribution to make at this historic juncture. So when asked to conduct two concerts celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall, he jumped at the opportunity.