Meanwhile, Bernstein was also pursuing his parallel career as a composer. There were some purely concert works: his Symphony No. 1 (“Jeremiah
”) won the New York Music Critics Award for 1944. Its theme—the loss and renewal of religious faith—was to resurface in two other orchestral works, Symphony No. 2 (“The Age of Anxiety,
” 1949, modelled on a W. H. Auden poem) and Symphony No. 3 (“Kaddish,
” 1963, which drew its name from a Jewish prayer...