Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from Westside Story

Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

The original production of Westside Story ran for 732 performances, spawned a movie that won 11 Academy Awards, and is still a go to on every list of the greatest Broadway Musicals ever written. The collaboration between Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Jerome Robbins was a revolution on par with the collaborations of Stravinsky, Diaghilev, and Nijinsky on the Rite of Spring. No Broadway show had ever been so gritty, so tragic, and so raw. The first performances of Westside Story were done against the backdrop of a rise in gang violence in New York City. The socio-economic aspects of the show were evident to everyone who watched it, and I always like to remind people that the location where Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, who adapted Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for this show, and Sondheim imagined the story taking place is where Lincoln Center now sits, a seat of opulence and extravagance. Simply put, this was a musical, a comedy, a tragedy, a political statement, and most importantly, a stunningly revolutionary work of art by these collaborators. Today, I want to tell you about the music, and more specifically, the Symphonic Dances from Westside Story, an arrangement that Bernstein made with his colleague Sid Ramin 3 years after the show’s premiere. The Symphonic Dances brought Bernstein’s electric music from the theatre to the concert stage, and it’s stayed there ever since. So today, we’ll go through each number, talking about just what makes this music so great, and also about the show itself - its background, its production, and the issues that Bernstein, Laurents, Sondheim, and Robbins were trying to tackle, all through the eyes of a tale of woe about Juliet and her Romeo, or of course, Maria and Tony. Join us!