Leonard Bernstein is one of the notable personalities of 20th-century international music. He was educated in the USA and was the first American to achieve worldwide acclaim as a conductor. In 1981 Thomas R. Seiler met Bernstein at a rehearsal party in Munich. The conductor invited Seiler to accompany him as an unofficial photographer. The result is a photographic portrait of Leonard Bernstein, a personal record of the last ten years of his life. The photographs are complemented by the personal reminiscences of contemporaries and friends of Bernstein's, including Yehudi Menuhin, Isaac Stern, Christa Ludwig and Peter Weiser.