Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall

Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall A celebration of the music of Stephen Sondheim [Compact Disc 782.14 Son] 

This two-CD album is a marvelous recording from a live event that took place in June 1992 at Carnegie Hall, in which many of the past stars of songs penned by Stephen Sondheim gathered to perform his music in a concert setting, to pay tribute to the master lyricist. The event was recorded for release as an episode of PBS’ Great Performances, and came out both as a DVD and as this musical CD. The show is a veritable “Who’s Who” of Broadway mega-talents from that era, including Madeline Kahn, Liza Minelli, Betty Buckley, Patti LuPone, Patrick Cassidy, Victor Garber, Bernadette Peters, Glenn Close and more. The songs included are among the best-known pieces of music in Broadway history, epitomized by Sondheim’s fast lyrics and manic pacing.
While some of the individual tracks may not live up to the quality of the Original Cast Recordings of their respective shows, this is still a very fun collection, with live audience reactions to the performances. I recommend this for any Sondheim completists, or if you’re only vaguely familiar with his great body of work and just want a sampler of some of his best pieces.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try any of the soundtracks to individual Sondheim-created stage musicals, including Assassins, Company, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Into the Woods, A Little Night Music, Sunday in the Park With George and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Also, this concert was also released on DVD (though the libraries don't own it).]

[ manufacturer’s official Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall ordering page — play samples of all tracks ] | [ official www.sondheim.com web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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Into the Woods: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: Deluxe Edition (on CD and Hoopla)

Into the Woods: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: Deluxe Edition
by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine [Compact Disc 782.14 Into] 

Into the Woods was a staged musical, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, which opened in San Diego in 1986, then on Broadway in 1987, winning Tony Awards for Best Score and Best Book (opposite Broadway juggernaut Phantom of the Opera). After years of successful runs, touring productions, local community theater and high school productions, Hollywood finally produced a motion picture version just within the past couple of years, featuring a cast full of both movie and stage stars. Meryl Streep is The Witch, James Corden and Emily Blunt are The Baker and his wife, Anna Kendrick is Cinderella, Chris Pine is Prince Charming and Johnny Depp is The Wolf — among many, many more.

Over the years, many different soundtrack albums have been released, from various productions — New York, London, revivals, etc. — and the movie version put out two different soundtracks. One was a shorter single-disc album, featuring 20 songs — all the major “hits” from the show — while the Deluxe Edition was a two-disc album featuring 50 tracks, including a ot of the dialog that leads into the individual songs. The cast, overall, does a marvelous job with what is sometimes extremely fast-paced lyrics, often with various singers overlapping each other with their own motifs. The show, which plays around with traditional fairytale tropes and pokes loving fun at long-standing storytelling traditions, still manages to evoke a lot of intense emotion, and the performances here capture that emotion well. The “Opening Prologue”, which sets all the characters’ storylines in motion, is tremendous. Every character has a moment to shine, both with humor and with drama. And by the end of the show, when the entire cast shares verses of “Finale/Children Will Listen”, I challenge you not to have been moved. I know some fans of the staged version are not fans of the movie version, but, personally, I loved the movie and this two-disc soundtrack is one of my favorites! Highly recommended!!

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the two-disc soundtrack to the recent filmed version of Les Miserables, starring Hugh Jackman and a cast of other notables.] [ Wikipedia page for the Into the Woods movie soundtrack ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

Have you listened this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!