The 44-year-old conductor will lead memorial concerts in Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki three days later, when the two cities separately mourn the more than 200,000 people who died in the world's only atomic attacks.

Sado, now one of the world's leading directors, accepted the job because he wanted to stand on the podium where the great US maestro wielded a wand in 1985 to pray for nuclear disarmament and world peace.

"Twenty years ago when I was still nobody, I watched television at a dingy little restaurant and saw Leony deliver a message of peace through music from Hiroshima. It moved and stunned me," says Sado, who became one of the closest pupils of Bernstein two years later.

"What I learnt from him was that music is a prayer and hope for peace," Sado says in an interview with AFP, recalling his lessons from Bernstein, who died in 1990.

Sado will lead a specially formed orchestra for the events, titled "Concert for Peace 2005," drawing top artists including Latvian-born cellist Mischa Maisky to play numbers such as "Make Our Garden Grow," composed by Bernstein.

"What music can do may be limited, but music can get to people's heart behind religions, languages, cultures. Music has a wonder power," a smiling and courteous Sado says in his backstage room ahead of a concert in Tokyo.

Sado, born in the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto, took to conducting in his own way. Unlike many young prospective conductors driven since their youth, Sado as a youngster was copying rock stars such as Deep Purple playing keyboard in a band.

But enlightened by Bernstein's performance in Hiroshima, he blitzed along to become a serious conductor. He made his global debut in 1989 with the first prize at the 39th Concours International de Jeunes Chefs d'Orchestre in Besancon, France.

He is now the principal conductor of the Orchestre de Concerts Lamoureux in Paris and directs other major orchestras in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Japan.

Sado, known for his dynamic conducting with full use of his stout body, is often seen as a successor to Seiji Ozawa, a globally acclaimed conductor who is now the music director of the Vienna State Opera.

Much like his late master, Sado says he is driven to music in part out of concern for humanity, a feeling reinforced by tragedies such as the July 7 terrorist bombings in London.

"Although people in our generation have not experienced the war, it is our duty to deliver an important message of peace to the next generation," Sado says.

"But the reality is ... we have yet to achieve peace," Sado says.

"Terrorism occurs everywhere in the world. People are forced to live under the threat of violence. Something is wrong," he said. "Something is. No one has a right to take someone else's life."

Sado's efforts at peace through music have extended to victims of natural disasters. He has become the director of a new music hall near Kobe which will open later this year marking the 10th anniversary of the western Japanese city's earthquake.

He is forming a new orchestra for the Hyogo Performing Arts Center in Nishinomiya, one of the hardest hit areas by the quake that killed more than 6,000 people on January 17, 1995.

"In such emergency cases as the Kobe earthquake, the first priority is not music but food and daily necessities," Sado says.

"But once the priority has been fulfilled, people naturally seek something that can move them and attract them."

Sado will conduct Beethoven's Ninth for the opening of the new concert hall on October 22.

In March, he also directed members of top orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmoniker and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to mark the opening of World Exposition, an international showcase of Earth-friendly technology in central Japan's Aichi province.

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