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The charismatic and versatile American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein was a prolific writer of letters throughout his life 鈥� tens of thousands of them being held at Washington鈥檚 Library of Congress. A newly published collection of 650 of the letters presents a revealing selection of exchanges between Bernstein and a wide range of correspondents including Aaron Copland, Bette Davis and Jerome Robbins as well as his family. Petroc Trelawny talks to Nigel Simeone who has edited this collection and is joined to review it by the American conductor John Mauceri, a prot茅g茅 of Bernstein's, and the writer and broadcaster Edward Seckerson.听 Michael Brandon reads a selection of the letters.

Photo: William P. Gottlieb

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Who was the man behind Carnegie Hall? Andrew Carnegie was a Scot by birth, raised in a weaver鈥檚 cottage in Dunfermline before he and his family went to America, where Carnegie was to make his fortune in steel and the railways. He died in 1919 leaving a musical legacy including over 7,000 church organs and 3000 libraries and music halls, including the infamous Carnegie Hall in New York. Liz Macdonald from the Carnegie Trust UK tells the story of Carnegie the man,听 and the work which continues in his name today.听 Robert Bowles, organist of The Church of the Holy Spirit, Clapham, demonstrates one of the few remaining working organs built with generous help form Carnegie听

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Even before the recent American Government Shutdown the classical music world in the United States was going through a turbulent time Petroc talks to Anne Midgette, Music Critic of The Washington Post about some of the current top music stories in the US - from the Minnesota Orchestra to New York's mayoral elections and orchestral musicians who have taken the unprecedented action of withdrawing from their trade union.

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Joshua Rifkin, whose career as a pianist and academic has spanned Renaissance motets to ragtime masters, talks to Petroc about reviving the music of Scott Joplin, growing up amongst the modernists of New York, studying with Stockhausen in Germany and his now influential theory that most of Bach's choral works were sung with only one singer per part, an idea widely rejected when Rifkin first proposed it in the 1980s.听听

Photo: Jan Kobel

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