Throughout his career, Leonard Bernstein had to sustain a constant struggle to achieve and maintain a healthy balance between all his extended talents as a conductor, composer, pianist, classical music popularizer, and well-known media personality. It would seem that his task as a composer could have been affected by such a workload, but he managed to leave us, at his death in 1990, a huge catalog especially rich in symphonic works and works for the musical stage. Among the latter, the musical West Side Story, a 1957 Broadway production that was made into a film with spectacular success only four years later, in 1961, stands out luminously.
The Story
The play was originally called East Side Story. It loosely told the timeless story of Romeo and Juliet and was set, of course, on New York's East Side, with a large Jewish population. But soon it was felt that a story reflecting the conflicts of rival teenage gangs, with Latino immigrants playing a prominent role, was a better fit with the times. The location was changed to the Upper West Side. It was a hit. The story of young love, with a spectacular choreographic backdrop and brilliant ad-hoc music, forever earned a prominent place in the heart of American culture.
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| Leonard Bernstein, in 1975 (1918 - 1990) |
Its musical highlights include the romantic ballad Maria, the mixed meter song America, Something is Coming for tenor, Tonight, the "balcony scene", and others of lesser prominence. A special place is occupied by the first act number Dance at the Gym, a Cuban-inspired, highly rhythmic mambo. In the heat of the mambo, rival gangs, the Jets (white Americans) and the Sharks (Puerto Rican Americans) fire up the engines for that night's fight.
The dance has become an autonomous piece, also an essential encore when paying tribute to Latin rhythms with the means of a symphonic orchestra.
Venezuelan Children's Symphony Orchestra
The version we are featuring is by the amazingly professional Orquesta Sinfónica Infantil de Venezuela, conducted by the English maestro and conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, Simon Rattle, during the Venezuelan orchestra's participation in the Salzburg Festival in 2013.
On that occasion, 1,400 young Venezuelan musicians attended the festival, marking a historic milestone. Eight ensembles forged in the National System of Orchestras and Youth and Children's Choirs of Venezuela, offered, in just over three weeks, fifteen concerts. The one mentioned here was one of them.
The musicians we hear here are between eight and fourteen years old. Prior to Bernstein's mambo, these little artists delivered their version of Mahler's First Symphony.
El Sistema
The Venezuelan organization, also known as El Sistema, is a music education program whose mission is to systematize the instruction and collective and individual practice of music through symphony orchestras and choirs, as instruments of social organization and human development. Its beginnings date back to 1975, inspired by the Venezuelan maestro José Antonio Abreu. Its fruits are in sight, or, if one could say, "in earshot".
But, most unfortunately –and I can't explain it– the video can only be watched on YouTube.
I'm so sorry!
