West Side Story Act II Ballet - some music I've never heard

This sounds exactly like what the orchestra played in both versions of the show that I have directed (and therefore obviously remember the best) although there are some changes in the the key - very minor - from the stage version.

Sounds like the ballet to me.

Maybe some great orchestrator like elmore will weigh in....

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They are in the score

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That's my favorite recording of West Side Story. I just wish they'd recorded the movie version of "Somewhere" as a bonus track as I'm not very found of the ballet.

From what I've read, the recording in question does include some music in the ballet that had not been previously recorded, even by Bernstein, but it's in the "Nightmare" section."

Robbins made a cut to that section in the original production. It's only recently that an edition of the score has been published that restores the cut section. The Naxos recording conducted by Schermherhorn is the first to include that section (approximately 30 seconds of music).

Thanks for that info nobodyhome. I didn't think I had heard those 30 or so seconds before.

I didn't know about this recording. Will most definitely order it.

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I'm not a musician or a dancer so I don't have recall of music, but it doesn't sound familiar to me.

So I'm guessing here...maybe it was filler put in for the fire escapes to come back in.

I wasn't around in 1957--only 1980--but apparently Robbins would just dictate to the musical director, dance-music arranger--or even the rehearsal pianist--"I need a few bars here" and Bernstein would accommodate him.

I'm no

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You're not kidding allmylife...I actually played in 2 high school productions of WSS...one the senior year for my HS, and the next year's summer county-wide high school theatre piece. In my high school's version, we even cut the first part of the mambo that's not on the OBCR!

What I really wonder about with the original production, well, amongst many other things, is how they were able to handle all the scene changes without adding music. There are several times throughout the score that scene-change music is provided, but I'm talking more during the songs...the Nightmare for instance, to go straight from the end of the Rumble back to the bedroom, to go straight from the ppp of "One Hand One Heart" to the ff of "Tonight." They must have put a lot of effort into making sure some of those musical transitions were able to occur so as to appropriately move scenery. Bravo to them for that.

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This still do, in this production. The improbably huge balcony/fire escape comes in over the quiet notes at the end of Maria as loud as a runaway A train.

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Bernstein did nearly all fo the dance music in WSS (very rare for Broadway of course) but according to one of his bios he wrote the Dream ballet largely in advance and Robbisn cut around it--so my first guess would be Robbins cut this in the first production and it's usually been cut since then? It's great to have it recorded though. I believe much of the other dance music (probably excepting the Prologue which was based on the cut song My Greatest Day and that Mooneroonie song thankfully cut anyway) was written live to the choreography.

This often causes probs in the world of ballet--even the classic Tchaikovsky scores are usually recorded in the versions he wrote--not the way he adapted the ballets to choreographer Petipa's staging and they're often performed (Swan Lake being only a success after he died with many changes made causing even more problems when companies foolishly go back to his original score).

Updated On: 3/11/09 at 02:58 AM

From someone who has the score:

"The ballet is published in both the old and new vocal scores with cuts in the Nightmare section. The original rental parts had the same cuts so a complete recording of the ballet was impossible. Both the OBC recording and all others record the complete ballet with the cuts in the score and I don't believe there's any complete ballet recording."

He was pleased when I found the Schermerhorn recording, and verifies that it is the ONLY complete recording. Even Bernstein's own recording is the cut version.

I thought it was Seacrest's bio of Bernstein but I read 3 Bernstein books and two Jerome Robbins over the past year so I couldbe wrong. I did read it though--I'll try to check...

What's funny is my grandma bought this recording cheap and I looked at it when she showe dme and kinda snobbily thought to myself "it's probably an awful, cheap recording with no drama or style" but now I think I'm gonna have to borrow it...