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West Side Story didn’t have a promising start. A gritty, urban show about juvenile delinquents, with grim ethnic tension pumping through its veins... "too miserable," said one of the many producers who turned it down. "I don’t know how many people begged me not to waste my time," reflected Bernstein, "on something that could not possibly succeed – a show full of hatefulness and ugliness".

West Side Story premiered on 9 September 1957, but the idea was originally conceived back in 1949 as East Side Story. It would be a 20th-century Romeo and Juliet, set in the Manhatten slums where Jewish and Catholic gangs clashed during the passover Easter festival. But a 1954 newspaper headline about rapidly escalating gang violence prompted a change of direction: Shakespeare's romantic tragedy became a blood feud between Puerto Rican immigrants and a self-styled "American" gang, the Sharks and the Jets.

And there was the perpetual issue of what the show even WAS. Lyric theatre? Musical play? Musical comedy? Broadway opera? Writer Arthur Laurents recalled in his autobiography that "what all of us agreed we wanted was impossible to categorize, because we couldn’t define it". The piece that composer Leonard Bernstein, lyricist Stephen Sondheim, choreographer Jerome Robbins and writer Arthur Laurents built was a bold and imaginative set of bridges between worlds.

Laurents invented a clipped street-talk, stylising the Jets’ distinctive patter ("Cut the frabba-jabba") and he gave the Sharks a Spanish-style slang ("Kiddando", rather than "kid"). The choreography by Robbins shimmies, swaggers, punches and kicks - pride and rage executed with jaw-dropping skill and ingenuity. And Bernstein brought the fluidity and emotional layers of opera into a toe-tapping, finger-snapping musical framework where musical hooks drew the work together amid a fusion of classical and Latin styles.

This is one of 100 significant musical moments explored by Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 3’s Essential Classics as part of Our Classical Century, a Â鶹ԼÅÄ season celebrating a momentous 100 years in music from 1918 to 2018. Visit bbc.co.uk/ourclassicalcentury to watch and listen to all programmes in the season.

This archive recording features the Â鶹ԼÅÄ Philharmonic with conductor Juanjo Mena.

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