Sharks and Jets jostle with violins and horns in West Side Story
The Philadelphia Inquirer Blog - Artswatch
Sharks and Jets jostle with violins and horns in West Side Story
Peter Dobrin, Inquirer Classical Music Critic
When orchestra plays live to film, as the Philadelphia Orchestra increasingly does, you might find yourself consciously sorting out the essence of the experience. Are you in a movie house or concert hall? In West Side Story, with the orchestra playing beneath a large-screen showing of the 1961 film, Philadelphians Friday night easily out-rumbled the balletic thugs from the Sharks and Jets. But when the audience applauded at the end of songs, were they showering Natalie Wood with praise, or the orchestra’s alternately luscious and trenchant handing of Leonard Bernstein’s score? Those few who walked out at the end as the orchestra was playing music over credits made it clear where they thought they had spent the evening.
The question of concert versus movie apparently never worried the woman sitting in front of me; poor thing had mistaken Verizon Hall for her living room. Kicking off her shoes and setting stocking feet atop the first-tier railing made for a curious bit of social slouching not likely to be tolerated by any parent at one of the orchestra’s family concerts.
Audiences better get used to more “event” elements entering the concert realm. Management even aims to bring the circus to town, literally, in case the orchestra on stage isn’t enough to bring you in. This West Side Story, though, was an absolutely legitimate artistic project. For one thing, the city can take a special interest in Bernstein, who went to the Curtis Institute of Music, where the culture is now catching up with the composer/conductor’s prescient acts of career-inventing and comingling of classical with popular.
The tunes and even the ensemble itself reflect Bernstein’s catholic style – one that embraced a sweetness at one end (“I Feel Pretty”) that could have been penned by a slightly more evolved Franz Lehar, and on the other by the menacingly quiet drums and scattershot dissonance echoing through gorgeously bleak shots of New York squalor. The orchestra was augmented by freelancers with show chops, most notably a terrific trumpeter who belted out high notes of steel.
The orchestration is a story in itself. Materials for the original film score were lost, and so what’s heard in this concert presentation, which has toured nationally, is neither from the film nor the musical, but an amalgam overseen by composer Eleanor M. Sandresky and ultimately credited to five orchestrators. It is superb, and must be considered, along with Jerome Robbins’ choreography and Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics, a primary source of genius and pleasure.
Opera and ballet, after all, ask audiences to make decisions about whether to look or listen, crawl inside the heads of characters or heed the score. West Side Story has elements of both. Technology did the job of lifting and preserving vocals of the original soundtrack. Recalling, if just a bit, Fred Astaire’s posthumous dance in a vacuum cleaner commercial, conductor David Newman synced up the ensemble with Wood, Richard Beymer (Tony), Rita Moreno (Anita) and others as timed markers wiped across a small screen beneath him. The sound quality of the vocal recording, and the voices themselves, didn’t come up to the full-spectral sound of the orchestra, but you understood why this was a project worth doing when the love-addled “Tonight” is joined by the racing exhilarant of the orchestra. Juliette Kang, sitting concertmaster for the night, entered with a brief and touching solo at the end of the balcony scene. Hornist Jeffrey Lang – an orchestra member, but with an impressive Broadway resume – was as lithe and emotional as any singer.
Two 12-year-old boys I know told me afterwards they had a tough time waiting through “all that singing” for the next rumble. Gangs and knives? For some orchestra fans, this was a star turn for an important score, with a dim rectangle flickering somewhere off in the distance.
I'm pretty sure that was Marni Nixon and not Natalie Wood singing Ms. Wood's songs.— Frank S.- I cannot see how showing movies, using the orchestra instead of the soundtrack, helps our orchestra move forward. It's a challenge to synchronise with the video, but who cares? It's called a click track. I guess the Bernstein family got something out of it, as did David Newman. I am sure it was expensive to close off half the hall for the big screen. What was the total attendance? Probably about half a house.
Music is the point, performed by great artists, not this. As Daffy says, it's a good trick. but ... oh yeah, we've had that, too.— altekakker - The joint was packed with everything from families with children to young adults and senior citizens. Not many ties in the house either. I used to see the orchestra at the Mann Center during the summers with the free tix. That program was dropped so as far as cultivating new fans, well you see what happened. Oh, and BTW, the movie with the orchestra performaing was magnificent entertainment. Superb. The orchestra had better schedule a lot more of this type of program if they wish to remain in business.— pres
- "Back to the future"... In the 1920's, the large cities had full orchestras backing the main shows of the silent movies in the super-deluxe houses. NYC's Roxy Theatre's orchestra pit could fit 110 musicians. Those orchestras frequently played standard symphonic repertoire as part of the presentation. PhilyOrch's own Eugene Ormandy got his start in this country as Concertmaster at NYC's Capitol Theatre. He noted: "After playing Ein Heldenleben for three shows a day 6 days a week, you KNEW the music." The Philadelphia Orchestra does owe a debt to playing film accompaniment, albeit indirectly, as they retained a generation's worth of music and musicians as a byproduct.— factcheck
- Factcheck: check your facts. Movie theatres had very few musicians, usually a small ensemble, or an organist. As for Strauss tone poems threetimes a day,that's ludicrous. I doubt Ormandy said anything of the kind.
In any case, the future of the orchestra, and high art as well, is reliant on energizing the donors, not the public. Aiming low takes the focus off the music and artists and will only result in fewer interested parties with the funds to support the arts.
— altekakker - The facts are there, merely by reading "The Best Remaining Seats", Ben Hall, 1960. (The direct quote of Ormandy is in the book, more correctly.) The major houses in the largest cities (NYC Rivoli, Paramount, Roxy, Capitol, for example) had fully-staffed orchestras for the main shows of the day, with organists or pianists performing the work at off hour and at most shows in the smaller houses. (In fact, the Roxy Orchestra was even larger than the NY Philharmonic at the time the house opened.) Additionally, even the Wikipedia entry on Ormandy notes his hiring by Erno Rapee, promotion to concertmaster within 5 days, and the beginning of his conducting career, all with the 77-piece Capitol Theatre orchestra. Agree that music needs to drive the orchestra first, GeeWhiz/Wow presentations second. — factcheck
- From the first notes of the overture to the end, the orchestra sounded fantastic, goose bumps all the way. Great music, great orchestra.— LindaGrace1982
- From the first notes of the overture to the end, the orchestra sounded fantastic, goose bumps all the way. Great music, great orchestra.— LindaGrace1982
Peter Dobrin is a classical music critic and culture writer for The Inquirer. Since 1989, he has written music reviews, features, news and commentary for the paper, covering such topics as the Philadelphia Museum of Art at the Venice Biennale, expansion of the Curtis Institute of Music, the Philadelphia Orchestra's bankruptcy declaration in 2011, Philadelphia's evolving performing arts center and the general health of arts and culture.
Dobrin was a French horn player. He earned an undergraduate degree in performance from the University of Miami, and received a master's degree in music criticism from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with Elliott Galkin. He has no time to practice today.
