While the scandal at the premiere of Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps" is legendary, the symphonic dances from Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story" enjoy great popularity from the very beginning. Andrea Battistoni juxtaposes these iconic masterpieces of the 20th century in a co-production between MDG and DENON with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.
Even though the "Sacre" is now part of the repertoire of all major orchestras, its powerful music with stomping rhythms and expressive instrumentation still seems extremely modern today. The audience at the premiere is said to have burst out laughing at the beginning of the bassoon solo - today, more than a hundred years later, aspiring bassoonists must master the agonizing high notes.
Romeo and Juliet were the godfather of "West Side Story". The way Bernstein sets the rivalry between Puerto Ricans and Anglo-Americans in New York in the 1950s to music is astonishing: modern jazz meets Latino rhythms, mambo and cha-cha meet scherzo and fugue. The Symphonic Dances condense the eternally young plot with hits such as "Somewhere" into a touchingly rousing orchestral suite.
Almost 50 years lie between the creation of the two works, and while the "Sacre" catapulted ballet into the 20th century, freed from plush, "West Side Story" emancipated the musical as absolutely equal to opera and operetta. Battistoni stages the contrasting works with audible joy in the rhythm, which here and there becomes an immediate physical experience.
