8/2/2019 Sondheim's Remastered Cast Albums

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Putting them togetherFour re-ma stered Sond heim ca st recordingsare released with bonus tracks

T he Masterworks Broadway re-release of theoriginal cast recordings of Sweeney Todd,Merrily W e Roll Along, Sunday in the Parkwith George an d Into the Woods have the feel ofthe return of old friends. These CDs, released bySONY BMG Music Entertainment, showcaseStephen Sondheim at the peak of composingfully realized theatrical scores and also displaythe best work of the top cast album producers.

Those of us old enough to remember the earlydays of the compact disc, when the only availableSweeney CD was a truncated "highlights" singledisc, will appreciate the digitally re-mastered,two-disc recording here. While a soundtrack fromthe upcoming Tim Burton movie version ofSweeney Todd might reach an even wider audi-ence, the original 1979 album will stand as thebest sung and best-produced Sweeney recordingand possibly the most satisfying original castalbum of any modern Broadway musical.Producer Thomas Z. Shepard di d some of hismost inspired work on the Sweeney Todd album,incorporating enough dialogue from the librettoto make the entire album coherent and usingspecial aural effects (such as the sound of thebarber's chair depositing bodies down the chute)to heighten the suspense. Two of the bonustracks are from the 1992 Sondheim: ACelebration at Carnegie Hall the seven-and-a-half minute "Symphonic Sondheim: SweeneyTodd" piece opening that concert featuring Jerry

t Hadley and Eugene and Herbert Parry singing"Johanna" and "Pretty Women," and HarolynBlackwell's rendition of "Green Finch and LinnetBird." There's also a hidden track of Julie *Andrews' version of "Sweet Polly Plunkett" fromthe recording of the 1993 N ew \brk productionof Putting It Together.

Merrily W e Roll Along, recorded the day afterits final performance in November 1981, displaysth e breadth of Sondheim's songwriting. Listeningto "Like It Was." which avoids any rhymes untilthe final lines, one is struck that it immediatelyprecedes the intricately rhymed "FranklinShepard. Inc." The bonus Merrily tracks are ofBernadette Peters' "Not a Day Goes By" from the1992 Celebrationconcert, and a fascinatingdemo of Sondheim singing "It's a Hit!" before anenthusiastic audience prior to the show's open-ing. This version of the song has a lengthier mid-dle section with clever lyrics not retained in thefinal version ("The songs earning bullets Andevery house full, it's A cinch for the Pulitzer Orthe Nobel").

Shepard told Craig Zadan in the 1980s that"the real pleasure in doing Sunday, which'recorded digitally all the way through, is to 1

the compact disc . . . When you hear that arpeg-gio at the beginning, it comes out of an absoluteeerie silence ... and there's nothing like it." Theopening notes on the re-mastered Sunday album,plus the performances of the entire cast (includ-ing Charles Kimbrough, Barbara Bryne and BrentSpiner) have never sounded better. The extraSunday tracks are the title song from PuttingItTogether performed by Julie Andrews, StephenCollins, Christopher Durang, Michael Rupert andRachel York) with new Sondheim lyrics, andBernadette Peters and the chorus of the 1992Celebration concert singing the choral "Sunday."

By the time of Into the Woods , Shepard hadyielded to Jay David Saks, who didn't miss a beatin expertly recording a Sondheim show.Sondheim wrote some of his most poignantmelodies fo r this musical ("No More," "No OneIs Alone"), as well as several of his most exuber-ant ("It Takes Two," "Ever After") , and from thisalbum it's easy to discern whyWoods is so univer-sally popular. Of special interest are the threebonus tracks that, according to the liner notes,were songs for a proposed children's video adap-tation. There's a different version of "Giants inthe Sky," sung by John Cameron Mitchell; "Backto the Palace," a variation of "On the Stepsofthe Palace" (sung by Kim Crosby, who playedCinderella in the original Broadway production)and "Boom Crunch," sung by Maureen Moore, abluesy song that appears to take the place of"Last Midnight."

The new liner notes on the albums includeextensive photos of the original productions,quotes from original performers (Victor Garberon the Sweeney Todd album, Bernadette Peterson Sunday) and some intriguing trivia (such asthe identity of the elderly stage actress whoattended the Merrily cast recording).Unfortunately for those without Internet sa\vy.the lyric sheets from the original releases arenow only available on the Masterworks BroadwayWeb site (www.masterworksbroadwayLOOBi).Given that the size of CD jewel boxes haie facedlyrics to be printed in increasinglysmaller type, however, lyrics in P Iactually be a blessing.

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