Bernstein: West Side Story: Symphonic Dances

Following the huge success of the previous release of outstanding ballet product, including the magnificent 50 CD box set A FESTIVAL OF BALLET, the ten BALLET EDITION albums and I LOVE BALLET, EMI Classics presents a further eight albums of ballet music.

These 2CD mid-price sets, drawn from the catalogues of EMI Classics and Virgin Classics, present a selection of the best-loved and most popular ballet music by the great composers, performed by the world’s leading artists.

Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein were two outstanding American composers who both contributed hugely to the musical scene in the USA. Both wrote ballets that broke new ground: Copland on themes that echoed the vast and lonely expanses of the American prairies, and Bernstein on the hectic life in New York in the middle of the 20th century. This album presents complete performances of Copland’s Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring and Bernstein’s Fancy Free and Facsimile, as well as extracts from other works including Bernstein’s powerful Symphonic Dances from his smash hit musical West Side Story.

Like Gershwin before him, Bernstein (1918-1990) composed music for the concert hall and for musical theatre. Through the Broadway musical West Side Story his name reached a far larger audience than that of virtually every other modern American composer, with the possible exception of Gershwin himself.The pieces on this disc illustrate Bernstein's work in the theatre. Four of the works, the dance episodes from On the Town, the overture to Candide, the suite from West Side Story and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, were written for the Broadway stage; Facsimile and On the Town are both ballet scores, Mass is a theatre piece for singers, players and dancers and what should have been a purely jazz piece, the Prelude, Fugue and Riffs, ended up being incorporated into the musical comedy Wonderful Town.

This programme brings the old world of festive Spain in Turina’s La Procession du Rocío into a meeting with Roger Nixon’s Californian ‘tonal fresco’ Fiesta del Pacifico. Chang Su Koh’s Korean Dances use exotic traditional rhythms, whereas Bernstein’s Symphonic dances refer to Cuban cha-cha and the Mexican mambo.

James Bonney’s Chaos Theory is a concerto for electric guitar which fuses hardrock intensity with classical sophistication. The Lone Star Wind Orchestra’s American Tapestry album (8570968) was described as ‘completely stunning.’ MusicWeb International

Celebrating its 80th anniversary season, the NSO here presents its first recording under its new music director. In the U.S., Christoph Eschenbach has previously held music directorships with Houston Symphony, Ravinia Festival, and The Philadelphia Orchestra.

This new release celebrates the memory of John F. Kennedy, and the 50th anniversary of his inauguration as U.S. President, by coupling new and historic recordings by the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, D.C.

CD 1 features Christoph Eschenbach conducting the January 2011 anniversary concert at the Kennedy Center. It includes the world premiere recording of Peter Lieberson’s Remembering JFK (An American Elegy), with famous actor Richard Dreyfuss narrating excerpts from speeches of President Kennedy. Also included are Bernstein’s popular Symphonic Dances from ‘West Side Story’.

CD 2 features excerpts from the previously unreleased 1961 Inaugural Concert under then-Music Director Howard Mitchell, including radio commentary from the original broadcast.

The Münchner Rundfunkorchester is continually expanding its expansive repertoire of classic-romantic orchestral music as well as the key works of the classical modern era to include compositions that build a bridge to the genre of film scores and light classics. The flexibility of the orchestra, which can adapt to the widest imaginable variety of idioms on the highest quality level, has earned it the status of an exceptional ensemble on the orchestral horizon. Under its artistic director, Ulf Schirmer, it also presents itself on this CD as a charismatic advocate for enjoyable genre cross-over. No composer fits this pattern better than Leonard Bernstein. Both his West Side Story as well as the suite of Symphonic Dances extracted from the score number amongst the absolute Bernstein classics. A rarity, on the other hand, is the short one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti. The way the gaping abyss behind an upscale bourgeois marriage is exposed both musically and dramatically is funny, striking, thrilling – and far too infrequently heard! Including a bonus: Elgin Heuerding in conversation with Ulf Schirmer.