Music Album Review: ‘West Side Story – Original Broadway Cast Recording’

West Side Story – Original Broadway Cast Recording (1957, 1990 CD Reissue)

Label: Columbia – CK 32603

Format: CD, Album, Reissue

Released: 1990

Genre: Classical, Stage & Screen

Style: Soundtrack, Musical

West Side Story has generated several indispensable recordings, but the 1957 original Broadway cast album remains the most historically revealing of them. Released shortly after the show opened at the Winter Garden Theatre, it preserves the score close to its theatrical source: lean, urgent, and still charged with the shock of a musical that fused Broadway lyricism, jazz-inflected rhythm, Latin dance, and operatic ambition into one dramatic language.

The original production, with music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by Arthur Laurents, and direction and choreography by Jerome Robbins, opened in September 1957. The cast recording, made at Columbia’s 30th Street Studio and issued by Columbia, features Larry Kert as Tony, Carol Lawrence as Maria, Chita Rivera as Anita, Mickey Calin as Riff, and Max Goberman as musical director. Its importance is not merely archival. It documents the sound of a landmark work before later film versions, revised orchestrations, and changing performance traditions inevitably reshaped how listeners understood the piece.

As a listening experience, the album has a tautness that distinguishes it from the more expansive film soundtrack recordings. Robbins’ choreography is, of course, absent, but Bernstein’s score still conveys motion, danger, and emotional momentum. Sondheim’s lyrics, already unusually specific for a first Broadway assignment, give the characters wit and urgency without reducing them to types. The familiar songs—“Maria,” “Tonight,” and “Somewhere”—retain their lyrical sweep, while the ensemble numbers and dance music reveal the score’s larger dramatic design.

“Something’s Coming” is one of the album’s most persuasive performances, with Larry Kert catching Tony’s restless optimism before the tragedy begins to narrow around him. The “Tonight” quintet remains the score’s great feat of construction: multiple lines of expectation, fear, desire, and rivalry are held in balance without sacrificing dramatic clarity. “America” and “Cool” sharpen the recording’s rhythmic profile, while “A Boy Like That / I Have a Love” and the “Finale” restore the full tragic weight of the story.

My own preference for this album is partly critical and partly personal. It was the first of the three major West Side Story recordings I owned—the original Broadway cast album, the 1961 film soundtrack, and the 2021 motion picture soundtrack—and that first encounter still shapes my response to it. The 2021 recording comes very close in freshness, vocal character, and recorded sound, but the original Broadway album remains my favorite because it carries the immediacy of the stage work at its source.

The album also belongs to a broader recorded history. The 1961 film soundtrack, conducted by Johnny Green, introduced the score to an even wider audience and became a major soundtrack album in its own right. The 2021 soundtrack, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel for Steven Spielberg’s film, revisits the material with a modern cast and a more contemporary sonic palette. Some later editions of the original Broadway cast recording extend the program further: the longer anniversary issue adds excerpts from Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, a concert suite that reframes the musical’s themes as orchestral drama. Heard in that context, the 1957 album is not simply the earliest recording; it is the foundation against which the later versions can be measured.

Tracklist
No.	Performer(s)	Title
1	Orchestra; The Jets; The Sharks	Prologue
2	Mickey Calin; The Jets	Jet Song
3	Larry Kert	Something’s Coming
4	The Jets; The Sharks	The Dance at the Gym
5	Larry Kert	Maria
6	Larry Kert; Carol Lawrence	Tonight
7	Chita Rivera; Marilyn Cooper; Shark Girls	America
8	Mickey Calin; The Jets	Cool
9	Larry Kert; Carol Lawrence	One Hand, One Heart
10	Ensemble; Quintet	Tonight (Quintet and Chorus)
11	Orchestra	The Rumble
12	Carol Lawrence; Marilyn Cooper; Carmen Gutierrez; Elizabeth Taylor	I Feel Pretty
13	Reri Grist; Ensemble	Somewhere (Ballet)
14	Eddie Roll; Grover Dale; The Jets	Gee, Officer Krupke!
15	Carol Lawrence; Chita Rivera	A Boy Like That / I Have a Love
16	Ensemble	Finale

References

• Library of Congress, National Recording Registry essay on the 1957 original cast recording of West Side Story.
• The Stephen Sondheim Reference Guide, West Side Story cast recordings and film soundtrack discography.
• CastAlbums.org entry for the 1957 original Broadway cast recording.
• Discogs release listings for the original Broadway cast recording and the 2021 motion picture soundtrack.
• Discogs release listings for the original Broadway cast recording, including the 50th anniversary edition with Symphonic Dances from West Side Story excerpts, and for the 1961 and 2021 soundtrack albums.