Leroy Anderson: Orchestral Music, Vol. 5
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Customer Reviews
Very disappointing
Goldilocks is one of my favorite forgotten musicals from the 1950s, and Kim Criswell as a performer whom I like quite a lot. So this CD seemed like a no-brainer. Although it was nice to hear the music with a larger orchestra than found on the original cast recording, vocals appear on only three selections! I am most disappointed that the show's most memorable number, "I Never Know When," is only instrumental. I wanted to hear Kim Criswell sing it! (If you don't have the Broadway original cast recording starring Elaine Stritch and Don Ameche, by all means get it.) As for the Christmas carols, the arrangements are undistinguished. If you did not know who had arranged them, you'd never know it was Leroy Anderson.
Leroy Anderson: Broadway Composer
Few people remember that America's iconic light music composer also composed for the Broadway stage. He actually wrote music for three shows but only one of them ever made it to the stage. The first was for 'My Sister Eileen' but it was scuttled in favor of a new version done by Leonard Bernstein and the team of Comden and Green: 'Wonderful Town.' That score is lost. In 1961 Anderson wrote three songs for a production of a musical adaptation of 'Gone with the Wind' that never came to fruition. But in 1958 he wrote the score to a Walter and Jean Kerr musical 'Goldilocks'. And this CD contains the music that was written for that production. The show itself was only mildly successful, running 161 performances at a time when the Broadway musical was dominated by 'My Fair Lady', 'West Side Story' and 'The Music Man.'
As in the earlier discs in this series, Leonard Slatkin and the BBC Concert Orchestra play their hearts out, and this time they are joined for several songs by baritone William Dazeley and soprano Kim Criswell. We hear eleven numbers from the musical itself as well as two orchestral arrangements later made by Anderson for independent performance: 'Lady in Waiting Waltz' and 'Shall I Take My Heart', the former originally an extended ballet in the show and the latter a ballad from the show. It must be said that this score is not a complete success, but it certainly has some high points: 'Lazy Moon', 'The Pussy Foot', 'Who's Been Sitting in my Chair' (deliciously sung by Criswell) and 'I Never Know When'. All have the expected Andersonian charm.
Filling out the disc is a brilliantly orchestrated set of six Christmas carols arranged for woodwinds which originally appeared on a 1955 LP and which also contained a set for brass and another for strings. They are here played in freshly recorded and beautifully played performances by the Slatkin and the winds of the BBC Concerto Orchestra.
Scott Morrison
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