Archive
WEST SIDE STORY – Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When Stephen Sondheim died aged 91, just a couple of weeks ago, the world of musical theater lost one of its best and most beloved practitioners. Although he was well-known for many of the scores he wrote himself – A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, many others – possibly his most beloved work by the general public was the one on which he “only” wrote the lyrics: West Side Story. On it Sondheim collaborated with the legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, creating a then-contemporary version of Romeo & Juliet transposed from renaissance-era Italy to 1950s New York, replacing the Montagus and the Capulets with street gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. It debuted on stage in 1957, and then was turned into a screen musical in 1961 by co-directors Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. That film went on to become one of the most successful and popular Hollywood musicals in history, and eventually won ten Oscars, including Best Picture. And now, 60 years later, we have a new version of the same story, directed by the legendary Steven Spielberg. Read more…
THE LIBERATOR – Gustavo Dudamel
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s always a big event when a darling of the classical music world joins the film scoring fraternity. Back in the early days of the medium it was not uncommon for classical greats to work in the movies; Aaron Copland, Sergei Prokofiev, Aram Khachaturian, Dimitri Shostakovich, Arnold Bax, Ralph Vaughan-Williams, and many others all worked for directors at various points in their careers. These days, it’s less common for there to be crossover. John Corigliano won an Oscar for The Red Violin in 1999, his third entry into the film score world, while composers as distinguished as Philip Glass and Michael Nyman are veritable mainstays, but for the most part, today’s most eminent concert hall artists tend to stay away from the scoring stage. Once in a while, though, someone takes the big leap, and the latest to join that club is Gustavo Dudamel, the erstwhile conductor-in-residence of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Read more…
Shop at the Movie Music UK Store
Member of the
MOVIE MUSIC UK 