Program Notes | Hollywood Hits: From West Side Story to Spirited Away

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Program

Keitaro Harada conductor
New Jersey Symphony

Paul Dukas The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Leonard Bernstein Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
      I. Prologue
      II. “Somewhere”
      III. Scherzo
      IV. Mambo
      V. Cha Cha
      VI. Meeting Scene
      VII. “Cool” Fugue
      VIII. Rumble
      IX. Finale

Intermission

Joe Hisaishi Suite from Spirited Away
      I. “One Summer’s Day”
      II. “Nighttime Coming”
      III. “The Gods”
      IV. “View of the Morning”
      V. “The Bottomless Pit”
      VI. “The Dragon Boy”
      VII. “No Face”
      VIII. “The Sixth Station”
      IX. Reprise
      X. “The Return”

George Gershwin An American in Paris

Made famous by Disney’s Fantasia, Paul Dukas wrote The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in 1897, inspired by a Goethe poem about a young apprentice who used magic to escape his daily chores. He soon discovered he couldn’t reverse the spell. If you’re familiar with the Disney animation, you’ll remember the scene: the brooms and buckets multiply and so does the chaos, marked by the driving rhythm of the bassoons.

Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story opened on Broadway in 1957, and he reworked the score for the concert hall in 1960. Without singers, the orchestra carries the drama alone: Listen for the finger snaps in the Prologue, the shouts from the players in the Mambo, and the edgy yet restrained energy of the “Cool” Fugue. The Rumble is as fierce as its title suggests, and the Finale answers it with a hushed return of the melody from “Somewhere.”

After intermission, we turn to Joe Hisaishi, longtime collaborator of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. His score for Spirited Away (2001) accompanies a girl who wanders into a bathhouse for spirits. The Suite begins with the tender, simple melody of “One Summer’s Day,” moves through the strangeness of “No Face” and the urgency of “The Dragon Boy,” and arrives at “The Sixth Station,” where a train glides across a flooded plain and the music seems almost to hold still.

We close with George Gershwin’s An American in Paris. Jazz infused rhythms, vivid orchestration, and iconic taxi horns paint a bustling cityscape. The music moves from bright optimism to reflective longing, creating a cinematic portrait of adventure, nostalgia, and newfound belonging.

Artist Bio