Health Problems Force Bernstein to Quit Podium : Music: His doctor prescribes rest. He will continue composing and writing and working on education projects.

Ailing Leonard Bernstein, the archetype for a generation of American conductors, has formally retired from the podium.

“Leonard Bernstein will henceforth devote his professional energies to composing, writing and education,” said Margaret Carson, Bernstein’s publicist, in a statement released Tuesday.

The announcement appeared to conclude a conducting career that was by far the greatest by a native-born American musician.

A heavy smoker, the 72-year-old Bernstein has suffered for many years from progressive emphysema, complicated by a pleural tumor and a series of pulmonary infections.

His doctor, Kevin M. Cahill, has prescribed a regimen of rest and recuperation. Cahill told Bernstein to stop conducting and performing on the piano, Carson said.

Bernstein last conducted Aug. 19 at the Tanglewood Festival, where he appeared in pain and coughed into a handkerchief during the third movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, according to published reports. Following that, he canceled a six-city European tour with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, a training ensemble.

Now he has withdrawn from scheduled appearances with the New York Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic and London Symphony, plus commitments to the Tanglewood Festival, Schleswig-Holstein (Germany) Festival and Pacific Music Festival in Japan.

Nonetheless, he still hopes to participate in the “Music for Life” AIDS benefit concert, Oct. 28 at Carnegie Hall, though in what capacity Carson could not say. Bernstein was originally scheduled to share the podium with James Levine, music director of the Metropolitan Opera.

Bernstein’s conducting career was launched in legendary fashion in 1943, when as the newly appointed assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic he substituted for an ailing Bruno Walter in a concert broadcast nationally. He later became the first American-born music director of that orchestra, serving from 1958 to 1969, when he became conductor laureate of the ensemble.

“Leonard Bernstein has been the New York Philharmonic for more than 45 years,” Albert K. Webster, managing director of the NYPO, commented. “We all will be less for the loss of his magic baton.”

In his parallel careers as a composer and conductor, Bernstein is virtually without peer, certainly among contemporaries. He was the first American to conduct at La Scala--a production of Cherubini’s “Medea” with Maria Callas in 1953--and in 1984 his “Quiet Place” was the first American opera ever presented there.

Bernstein’s charismatic way with the baton came into the homes of millions of Americans through a number of televised lecture/concert productions. His Young People’s Concerts began in 1958, ran for 15 years, and served as the model for countless imitators. His success in explicating music, he has said, was due in large measure to his efforts to teach his own three children music.

The composer of works as diverse as “West Side Story,” the score for “On the Waterfront,” the “Age of Anxiety” Symphony, the Chichester Psalms and a host of sonatas and songs, Bernstein will continue to compose. As soon as his health allows, he will resume work on a chamber piece and a new theater piece for next year.

He also has several educational, film and recording projects in the works, and is writing his memoirs.