West Side Story [Original Broadway Cast]

1	Prologue 3:50
2	Jet Song 2:10
3	Something's Coming 2:40
4	The Dance at the Gym 3:06
5	Maria 2:40
6	Tonight 3:53
7	America 4:35
8	Cool 4:01
9	One Hand, One Heart 3:03
10	Tonight Quintet and Chorus 3:40
11	The Rumble 2:45
12	I Feel Pretty 2:50
13	Somewhere (Ballet) 7:35
14	Gee, Officer Krupke 4:05
15	A Boy Like That/I Have a Love 4:18
16	Finale 2:02
17	Prologue (Allegro Moderate) Bonus Track 4:07
18	Somewhere (Adagio) Bonus Track 3:51
19	Scherzo (Vivace E Leggiero) Bonus Track 1:17
20	Mambo (Meno Presto) Bonus Track 2:14
21	Cha-Cha (Andantino con Grazia) Bonus Track 0:53
22	Meeting Scene (Meno Mosso) Bonus Track 0:47
23	Cool Fugue (Allegretto) Bonus Track 3:03
24	Rumble (Motto Allegro) Bonus Track 1:52
25	Finale (Adagio) Bonus Track 2:47

Barnes & Noble

Created in 1957 by some of modern theater's greatest talents -- composer Leonard Bernstein, lyricist Stephen Sondheim, author Arthur Laurents, and director-choreographer Jerome Robbins -- West Side Story is a musical masterpiece. The original cast recording of this variation on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is vibrant and crackles with tension. A superbly talented cast featuring Carol Lawrence, Chita Rivera, and Larry Kert makes the most of modern classics "Maria," "Somewhere," the heartbreakingly poignant "One Hand, One Heart," and "Tonight." Bernstein's brilliant score and orchestrations evince a wide array of influences, ranging from classical to jazz, from ballet to African rhythms, on propulsive compositions like "Cool," "The Rumble," the Latin-inflected "America," and the dramatic "A Boy Like That." No Broadway collection should be without this tremendous and thrilling recording. David Elliot Cohen

All Music Guide

West Side Story is one of the greatest musicals of all time, effectively blending Broadway with a symphonic grandeur (courtesy of Leonard Bernstein, who put music to Stephen Sondheim's lyrics), accents from jazz and Latin music, and a rarely heard (in Broadway) toughness on classics like "Jet Song," "America," and "Cool." The 1957 original Broadway cast recording still holds up today, but isn't as good as the movie soundtrack cast recording. If you, like most listeners, are most familiar with the work through the film, it'll be a bit jarring to find the songs presented in different sequence ("Cool," for instance, comes before the rumble, and "Gee, Officer Krupke" is one of the last tracks). [The 1998 CD reissue has value beyond replacing old scratched-up LPs: there are nine bonus tracks of instrumental "Symphonic Dances" from the production, recorded in 1961 by the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Bernstein (although these only add to a little more than 20 minutes of material), as well as historical liner notes.] Richie Unterberger