Four
Dances from West Side Story - Leonard Bernstein, arr. Ian Polster
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)
was an erudite, passionate musician whose exceptional talents and
expressive gifts earned him a special place in the hearts of New
Yorkers. His rose to instant national fame in 1943, at age
25, when he filled in for the suddenly ill Bruno Walter as conductor of
a nationally televised New York Philharmonic performance. He
went on to become the Philharmonic’s music director until 1969, and
remained a frequent guest conductor there until his death.
With the Philharmonic, he presented a series of 53 educational Young
People’s Concerts which were broadcast on CBS, making him a familiar
face around the nation. He also composed music, crossing from
academic classical music into Broadway musicals, including West Side Story, On the Town, and Candide.
The Broadway musical West
Side Story first came into being in 1957 as a
collaboration between Bernstein (as composer), choreographer Jerome
Robbins, writer Arthuer Laurents, and lyricist Stephen Sondheim.
Its story is based on William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
Set in the 1950s on Manhattan's West Side, it tells the
tragic tale of Tony and Maria, whose rival gangs doom their young love.
The musical became a film in 1961, winning 10 Academy Awards
including Best Picture. Bernstein's music was often a
character itself, giving the film psychological direction in many long
dance sequences. Originaly written in English, West Side
Story is currently being revived on Broadway in a bilingual version,
with the Puerto Rican Sharks speaking and singing mostly in Spanish
while the white Jets retain their English.
Four Dances from West
Side Story features some of the highlights of these dance
sequences transcribed for band. The "Scherzo" is a
light-hearted, care-free movement that aptly opens the suite.
The "Mambo" comes from the gym scene where the Jets and the
Sharks meet and dance while trying to suppress their hostility towards
each other. The "Mambo" fades into the "Cha-Cha" as Tony and
Maria notice each other for the first time and dance together,
transfixed. The anxiety-ridden "Fugue" is based on material
from the song "Cool", in which the Jets are convincing each other to
bottle up their overwhelming emotions. The fugue's subject is
a 12-tone row, lending a worrisome and tense feeling to the movement.
Each new statement of the theme adds more layers until the
texture explodes into a percussion-heavy statement of the main theme
from "Cool".
There is much material about both Bernstein and West Side Story on the
web. The survey below only scratches the surface.
Leonardbernstein.com
- a true treasure trove of everything Bernstein, including
many personal reflections by friends, relatives, and colleagues.