Bernstein ~ West Side Story: Mambo (1960)
Album cover for the
movie West Side Story
The Young People’s Concerts featuring Leonard Bernstein and the NY Philharmonic – Sunday afternoons on CBS – helped turn me on to classical music. Because of those Sunday afternoon programs with “Lennie and the boys” (they were all boys in those days) the first classical LP (you remember those?) my parents ever bought was Bernstein and the NY Phil performing Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker.
Bernstein was multi-talented and wrote pieces for performers, ensembles, and venues of all kinds — art song and orchestra, Broadway and concert hall, settings of Hebrew psalms and the Roman Catholic mass (a piece for huge forces including a rock band). Oh, and he did all this while serving as music director for one of the world’s great orchestras. The oft-heard criticism was that he was internally conflicted, that he spread himself too thin, and that he badly neglected his health. But without question, his music has touched a lot of people, including me.
Leonard
Bernstein
Bernstein assembled a suite of dances from his 1960 score to West Side Story. In this video, we see Gustavo Dudamel with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela — the group he conducted before his rise to the helm of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. This is not your average symphonic performance — watch how the players and the audience let it all hang out. I think Bernstein would have been pleased. And man does Gustavo have a head of hair …
Since mid-2017 Dudamel has begun speaking out about the tragic turn of events in his home country.
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