Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story/On the Waterfront (Naxos Musicals Audio CD)

Columbia Pictures Orchestra
Morris Stoloff, conductor
Ron Goodwin & His Orchestra


The original 1957 Broadway production of West Side Story, with Larry Kert, Carol Lawrence, Mickey Calin, Ken Le Roy, Chita Rivera, Marilyn Cooper, Reri Grist, Eddie Roll, Carmen Gutierrez, Elizabeth Taylor & Grover Dale and Max Goberman, directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins and produced by Robert E. Griffith and Harold Prince, marked Stephen Sondheim's Broadway debut. It ran for 732 performances (a successful run for the time), before going on tour.

The production garnered a Tony Award nomination for Best Musical in 1957, but the award went to Meredith Willson's The Music Man. It won a Tony Award in 1957 for Robbins' choreography. The show had an even longer-running London production, a number of revivals and international success, and spawned an innovative, award-winning 1961 musical film of the same name.

Bernstein's score for the musical has become extremely popular; it includes ‘Something's Coming,’ ‘Maria,’ ‘America,’ ‘Somewhere,’ ‘Tonight,’ ‘Jet Song,’ ‘I Feel Pretty,’ ‘One Hand, One Heart,’ and ‘Cool.’