Leonard Bernstein dubbed into other languages. All of them were released on DVD by Kultur Video (half of them in 2013). Around the time he was appointed music director of the New York Philharmonic, and living opposite Carnegie Hall at The Osborne, Bernstein composed the music for two shows. The first was for the operetta "Candide", which was first performed in 1956 with a libretto by Lillian Hellman based on Voltaire's novella. The second was Bernstein's collaboration with the choreographer Jerome Robbins, the writer Arthur Laurents, and the lyricist Stephen Sondheim to produce the musical "West Side Story". The first three had
Stephen Sondheim took the stage during an encore of his song, "Old Friends". In November 2015, Sondheim was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in a ceremony at the White House. Sondheim founded Young Playwrights Inc. in 1981 to introduce young people to writing for the theatre, and is the organization's executive vice-president. The Stephen Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts, at the Fairfield Arts and Convention Center in Fairfield, Iowa, opened in December 2007 with performances by Len Cariou, Liz Callaway, and Richard Kind (all of whom had participated in Sondheim musicals). The Stephen Sondheim Society was