In the biographical film Maestro, Leonard Bernstein’s dramatic 1943 Carnegie Hall debut conducting the New York Philharmonic, filling in at the last moment for Bruno Walter, receives a masterful cinematic treatment.

But the first time Bernstein wielded a baton in public took place on today’s date in 1939, when Lenny was still a student at Harvard and conducted his own incidental music for a student performance of the ancient Greek comedy, The Birds, by Aristophanes.

The play was performed in the original Greek, and since almost no one in the audience would understand what was being said, the production relied on visual, slapstick comedy and Bernstein’s electric music to bring the ancient text to life. Bernstein’s score referenced everything from sitar music to the blues to get the humor across. The student production was a surprise smash hit. Aaron Copland and Walter Piston were in the audience, and photos even appeared in Life magazine.

Bernstein recycled one of his bluesy songs from The Birds into his 1944 musical On the Town, but the rest of the 1939 score was never published, and only revived in 1999 for a performance by the EOS Orchestra in New York, and to date has never been recorded.

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990): On the Town: Three Dance Episodes; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 42263

On today’s date in 1862, an 18-year-old Russian named Nicolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov graduated as midshipman from the Russian Naval Academy and prepared for a two-year’s training cruise around the world. His uncle was an admiral and a close friend of the Czar, and in his autobiography Rimsky-Korsakov admits he, too, at first thought it might be a good idea — he loved reading travel books, after all.

But then Rimsky-Korsakov was seduced by music. He’d made the acquaintance of eminent Russian composers of his day, lost interest in a naval career, and dreamed of composing music himself.

The young midshipman’s tour of duty did enable him to hear a lot of it and to sample opera performances in London and New York. But what made the biggest impression on the budding composer was the sky below the equator.

“Wonderful days and nights,” he wrote. “The marvelous dark-azure of the day would be replaced by a fantastic phosphorescent night. The tropical night sky over the ocean is the most amazing thing in the world.”

It’s perhaps not too fanciful to believe that such impressions helped Rimsky-Korsakov develop into one of the most inventive and masterful painters of symphonic colors and instrumental effects.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908): Prelude (A Hymn to Nature), from The Invisible City of Kitezh; Scottish National Orchestra, Neeme Järvi, conductor; Chandos 8327

A concerto, according to Webster’s Dictionary, is “a piece for one or more soloists and orchestra with three contrasting movements.” And for most classical music fans, “concerto” means one of big romantic ones by Beethoven or Tchaikovsky, works in which there is a kind of dramatic struggle between soloist and orchestra.

But on today’s date in 2003, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and its concertmaster Stephen Copes premiered a Violin Concerto that didn’t quite fit that mold. For starters, it had four movements, and this Violin Concerto No. 2 by American composer George Tsontakis was more “democratic” than romantic — meaning the solo violinist seems to invite the other members of the orchestra to join in the fun, rather than hogging all the show. This concerto is more like a friendly, playful game than a life-and-death contest, and Tsontakis even titles his second movement “Gioco” or “Games.”

The new concerto proved a winner, being selected for the prestigious 2005 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. Even so, George Tsontakis confesses to being a little shy when sitting in the audience as his music is played, knowing full well, he says, that most people came to hear the Beethoven or Tchaikovsky, and not him.

George Tsontakis (b. 1951): Violin Concerto No. 2; Stephen Copes, violin; Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; Douglas Boyd, conductor; Koch International 7592