Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from Westside Story

Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

Joshua Weilerstein

Clarinet, Timpani, Performing, Trombone, Cello, Trumpet, Bassoon, Classicalmusic, Performing Arts, Arts, Violin, Flute, Piano, Conductor, Music, Weilerstein

4.9 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 January 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We're back! Welcome to Season 10!

Leonard Bernstein to his wife: "These days have flown so -- I don't sleep much; I work every -- literally every -- second (since I'm doing four jobs on this show -- composing, lyric-writing, orchestrating and rehearsing the cast). It's murder, but I'm excited. It may be something extraordinary. We're having our first run thru for PEOPLE on Friday -- Please may they dig it!." 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 with the Rite of Spring. Simply put, no Broadway show had ever been so gritty, so tragic, and so raw. This was a musical, a comedy, a tragedy, a political statement, and most importantly, a stunningly revolutionary work of art by these collaborators. And 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!

Transcript

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0:14.0	Hello and welcome to Sticky Notes, the Classical Music Podcast. My name is Joshua Wilerstein.
0:16.0	I'm a conductor, and I'm the chief conductor of the Allborg Symphony
0:19.0	and the music director of the Phoenix Orchestra of Boston.
0:22.0	This podcast is for anyone who loves classical music, works in the field, or is just getting ready to dive in to this amazing world of incredible music.
0:30.0	Before we get started, I want to thank all of my Patreon sponsors for making this show possible.
0:36.0	If you'd like to support the show, please head over to patreon.com slash stickynotes podcast.
0:42.0	And if you are a fan of the show, please take a moment to give us a rating or review on Apple
0:45.9	podcasts. It is greatly appreciated.
0:50.4	So welcome to season 10 of the show. I am back. We have just had a baby. It's been
0:57.2	amazing, amazingly tiring, amazingly wonderful time for the last six weeks or so.
1:02.0	For the time being the show will probably not be
1:06.6	every single week. I'm looking to do it every two weeks for the moment with the aim
1:12.3	of becoming weekly again very soon but obviously I'm sure
1:15.6	anyone who's had a child will understand it's very hard to have a consistent schedule
1:19.8	right now with anything let alone writing and recording and editing a podcast. So for the
1:26.2	time being the show will be every two weeks and hopefully within a couple of
1:30.5	months we'll be able to get to doing a show weekly again.
1:34.8	For my Patreon subscribers, I don't want them to feel deprived at all of the show as they signed
1:39.1	up for Patreon four, so I will be doing a Patreon exclusive mini episode every single for to 10 minutes about usually something that I'm studying that week for a concert or
1:54.8	something that I've noticed in a score. I often demonstrate things with my violin.
1:58.5	Often the episodes are filmed. It's a really fun way of just connecting with the Patreon subscribers.
2:04.0	So thank you again to all of those people and if you are interested please do head over to
	...

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