Dudamel Leads a Definitive ‘West Side Story’ at the Bowl
/By Truman C. Wang
7/14/2022
Last Thursday’s West Side Story film screening at the Bowl was a resounding hit. It also addressed an egregious wrong: using L.A. Phil as backup for the original soundtrack when it is the superior orchestra for American music to the New York Philharmonic.
I have often complained about over-amplification at the Bowl for classical music. However for this event, the sound was terrific – natural, large-than-life, brilliant – better than any cineplex or Dolby Atmos home theater setup (Just like Tuesday night, there was a police helicopter buzzing overhead for dramatic and Dolby Atmos effects.)
The fabulous L.A. Phil was augmented with a jazz ensemble for musical numbers “Jet Song”, “Mambo” and “Cool” and had many in the audience tapping toes and even singing along. The string playing was sumptuous and tender in “Maria”, “One Hand, One Heart” and most memorably “Somewhere”. Bernstein wrote the score of “West Side Story” like it’s a French grand opera, with a tragic ending and several ballet numbers. Dudamel, newly-appointed Music Director of the Paris Opera, gave it the full grand opera treatment, with a symphonic touch of Mahler in the spiritual passages of “One Hand, One Heart” and “Somewhere”. In my view, this Dudamel-led reading at the Bowl was the definitive West Side Story, surpassing the film soundtrack in authenticity, depth and breadth.
On the Spielberg-directed film itself, it’s what they called a box-office flop but a critical success (as opposed to the critical flops and box-office smash hits of most summer blockbusters). It appeals mainly to the connoisseurs of classic Hollywood musicals, with gripping montages in the musical numbers and faithful recreation of Jerome Robbins’ colorful choreography in “Mambo”, “America”, “Gee, Officer Krupke” and “Cool”. Spielberg’s remake respects the tradition but at the same time brings something relevant to today’s audience, such as during the gang fights in the beginning of the film, a group of street demonstrators could be seen holding up a “No Evictions” sign. Fans of the 1961 film would be thrilled to see Rita Moreno, the original Anita, here in the role of Valentina (Doc in the original film). Her singing of “Somewhere”, accompanied by the L.A. Phil’s meltingly beautiful strings, was one of the highlights of the evening.
Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.