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\u2018I am experiencing a historical moment, incomparable with others in my long, long life.\u2019 Leonard Bernstein<\/a><\/strong> was 71 when he spoke those words, six weeks after elated crowds began tearing down the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989.<\/p> 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.<\/p> 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.<\/p> The concerts were scheduled for the 23rd and 25th of December 1989, and would be uniquely symbolic in nature. Three choirs would assemble from different parts of Germany, and the orchestra would be international in character, drawing players from New York, Paris, London, Leningrad, and both East and West Germany. Together they would perform Beethoven<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Ninth Symphony, a work whose arduous transition from oppressive darkness into brilliant, joy-filled light seemed perfectly suited to the occasion.<\/p>When were Leonard Bernstein’s Berlin concerts?<\/h2>