With music by Leonard Bernstein and book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, On The Town enjoyed a successful Broadway run during the 1940s. The London production opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1963 and starred Elliott Gould along with Don McKay, Carol Arthur, Andrea Jaffeand Gillian Lewis. The Original London Cast Recording of On the Town has never before been available in the U.S.

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Starring in the London production was Elliott Gould, not long after he closed on Broadway in I Can Get It for You Wholesale – his big break as a musical leading man, which was an even bigger break for his wife-to-be Barbra Streisand. Gould played the happy-go-lucky Ozzie (a role created by Adolph Green). As Gaby, the lovestruck hero, the London production featured Don McKay, a Broadway singer/dancer with an attractive, boyish voice who had been the first Tony in the hit West End staging of West Side Story. The trio of sailors on leave was completed by another American, Franklin Kiser, as the nai?ve but determined Chip. A favorite in West End musicals like Salad Days, Gillian Lewis played Claire de Lune (Betty Comden in the original production), and American Carol Arthur was Hildy, the raucous cab driver unforget- tably created by Nancy Walker. American audiences know Arthur as a comedic actress (Blazing Saddles) and as the wife of comedian Dom DeLuise, but on this recording she belts out Hildy’s show-stopping, double-entendre-laced “I Can Cook, Too” with joyous abandon.

The London recording preserved much of Bernstein’s dance music, though some arrangements were updated and smoothed out – “I Can Cook, Too,” for instance, loses its fractured-big-band musical setting. Best of all, the London recording lets us hear this spectacular score with the charm of a cast that was performing the show onstage at the same time. With its Coplandesque ballet music and hyperkinetic invention, the score, oddly enough, may the most challenging aspect of On the Town. The London recording reminds us it is a challenge full of rewards – a heartfelt masterpiece, hilarious and zany, with romantic longing and unbridled hope lurking just beneath the gleaming surface. Maybe its time has come?

-- From the liner notes by David Foil

CAST
Ozzie – Elliott Gould
Chip – Franklin Kiser
Gabey – Don McKay
Hildy – Carol Arthur
Claire – Gillian Lewis
Diana Dream – Meg Walter
Workman – Howarth Nuttall
Policeman – Lewis Henry

MUSICAL NUMBERS:
1. Opening: 10:55
I Feel Like I’m Not Out of Bed Yet – Workman
New York, New York – Chip, Gabey, Ozzie and Chorus
Miss Subways – Policeman, Workman, Chip, Gabey, Ozzie and Chorus
2. Taxi Number: Come Up to My Place 2:15 – Hildy and Chip
3. Carried Away 3:15 – Claire and Ozzie
4. Lonely Town 5:07 – Gabey
5. I Can Cook Too 2:49 – Hildy
6. Lucky to Be Me 2:44 – Gabey
7. Dance: Times Square (Finale Act I) 5:14
8. Night Club Sequence: 4:59
So Long Baby – Chorus
I Wish I Was Dead – Diana Dream
You Got Me – Hildy, Ozzie, Claire, Chip, Gabey
9. Dance: Imaginary Coney Island 8:11
10. Some Other Time 3:48 – Claire, Hildy, Ozzie, Chip
11. Real Coney Island, Finale 4:01

Classical Music

Track Listing
1. Overture
2. Ladies Who Lunch, The
3. He Tossed a Coin
4. Two by Two
5. I Want to Be Happy
6. Coffee in a Cardboard Cup
7. Lucky to Be Me
8. Send in the Clowns
9. I'm Always Chasing Rainbows
10. Over Here!
11. What I Did For Love
12. Mack the Knife
13. Tomorrow
14. Fifty Per Cent
15. Come Follow the Band
16. Folies Bergere

Andrea Battistoni, a rising star conductor with an international reputation as one of the most important of his generation, juxtaposes two iconic 20th century dance masterpieces in this co-production by MDG and DENON. With every beat of Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps" and Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story", Battistoni's elation is audible and the immediacy of the rhythmic pulse can be felt.

Everyone involved in Jervaulx Singers has a passion for vocal music in all it's forms. The varied repertoire of Les chansons des roses encompasses all that this choir is about - giving singers the freedom to sincerely express themselves through choral music, song and opera. This repertoire, all connected to earth and nature, reminds us to cherish the world around us. Charlie Gower-Smith, Director, Jervaulx Singers

Track listings include: "Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 IV. Finale: Allegro con fuoco " "Stravinsky: Suite from "The Firebird" (1919 version) Finale Disc 2: "Mozart: Symphony No. 39 in E- flat Major, KV 543 "Copland: El salon Mexico" Disc 3: "Haydn: Missa in tempore belli in c major (Mass in Time of War) Hob. XXII: 9" "Sousa: Semper fidelis" "Barber: Adagio for Strings."

Music from Symphony No. 1, "Jeremiah"; Symphony No. 2, "Age of Anxiety"; Symphony No. 3, "Kaddish"; Chichester Psalms for Chorus and Orchestra ; songs from on the Town; Peter Pan; Fancy Free and Candide ; the original Broadway recording of West Side Story, and more!

Touches of Bernstein

Music pervaded by so many different influences, modern and yet rooted in tradition, assiduous and extremely cool. A Bernstein Story is an album which deals with Lenny's music the same way in which he dealt with music itself without being frightened to cross borders or snub someone. Classical Clarinettist Sebastian Manz and jazz musician Sebastian Studnitzky approach the great Leonard Bernstein in a way that illuminates every facet of his career and life. The two musicians have come to Bernstein in their own individual ways and from their respective fields- Manz as the classically trained artist, Studnitzky as a jazz man. The album they have produced, A Bernstein Story is meant to mirror the composer himself remote from any formal categorization, pluralistic in style, eclectically colorful, located somewhere between classical and jazz.

'I Will Breathe a Mountain' is a new cycle of songs from William Bolcom, written for Marilyn Horne as part of the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of Carnegie Hall. Bolcom sets eleven poems by eleven women, including Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop, in a variety of styles ranging from ragtime and cabaret oriented numbers to straightforward art songs. The result is impressive and is minutely tailored to Horne's particular vocal and interpretive strengths.
Horne has always been a distinguished interpreter of Bernstein. Here she sings excerpts from his theater and concert works to great effect, including the number from 'Songfest' intended for her as well as a song from the elusive '1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,' his final musical. Although recorded a bit late in the singer's career, it is good to have Horne's thoughts on the music of Samuel Barber. The songs are among the most beautiful of American art songs. This is an important addition to the legacy of recorded American song.

This electrifying performance gives vivid testimony to the multifaceted partnership of James Gaffigan and the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and invites us to explore the conductor's American roots. The program features Leonard Bernstein's mischievous dances from West Side Story, Charles Ives's spiritual Symphony No.3, the dramatically potent dissonance of Ruth Crawford's Andante for strings and Samuel Barber's boldly athletic Toccata for organ and orchestra.

Few people had comparable charisma to him, few like him could blur the borders between ‘serious’ classical music and ‘entertaining’ popular music and few apart from him could find access to people of all generations like Bernstein. Living together and love instead of antagonism and hatred permeate his entire life’s work in words and notes. Many of the attributes mentioned apply to MASS, premiered in 1971. For the understanding of this unusual work, it is crucial to note that it is not really seen as a mass composition, but in keeping with Bernstein’s intentions as ‘a theatrical piece with the title ‘MASS’. So, it is perhaps the most audacious interpretation of the liturgical contents up to then and since then. The responses to the premiere were thoroughly ambivalent, as, apart from enthusiasm, there was also rejection on the part of conservative minded circles. And the clearly conveyed message of peace was partly rejected since it could be understood not least as an unmistakable indictment of the Vietnam War still in progress.

Leonard Bernstein conducted regularly in Munich from the 1980s onwards. It was then that he learned to appreciate and love the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in particular. In October 1976, Bernstein appeared with an all-Beethoven programme, and in 1983 he began a series of annual concerts with the orchestra. In November of that year, he rehearsed Robert Schumann's Second Symphony and his own Divertimento (1980), which were performed in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz. This BR-KLASSIK CD presents the live recording of that concert event. Bernstein commendably championed Robert Schumann's Second Symphony - a work from 1845 that was repeatedly perceived as still immature and in need of improvement, and which Schumann himself confessed to having written in poor health. The critic Joachim Kaiser picked up on both facts in his concert review for the Suddeutsche Zeitung: "So what did Bernstein do differently to silence this scholarly talk, at least for all those who were lucky enough to listen to his Schumann? (...) Bernstein believed not only in Schumann's melodies - not difficult in itself - but also, and fervently, in the work's great symphonic developmental arcs. And because he was able to inspire the musicians of the superbly organised Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in such a natural, free and yet highly differentiated way, the power of Schumann emerged!" Bernstein's Divertimento, composed in 1980 for the 100th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, consists of eight miniatures developed from the semitone B-C. It begins with a fanfare and progresses through a waltz, a mazurka, a samba and a blues to a Radetzky-like march. The music is jazz-like, full of happy syncopation, unusual time signatures and dance-like verve. Bernstein also draws on memories of his first concerts - popular programmes that he attended as a child with his father in Boston's Symphony Hall.

This enterprising and exceptionally well-played CD contains the world premiere recording of a charming suite arranged from Candide, Bernstein's wittiest musical. When combined with the overture from the same show, as it is here, the result is a marvelous twosome that ought to appear together often. The Five Songs also are receiving their premieres in new orchestrations by Sid Ramin, a regular Bernstein collaborator. Mezzo-soprano Beth Clayton sings them beautifully. Add to these enterprising items a sparkling performance of the Divertimento (every bit as good as the composer's version) and the Three Meditations from Mass, originally arranged for Rostropovich (but here excellently played by cellist Anthony Ross), and the result is probably the most important Bernstein recording since Lenny's own. And of course, sonics are state of the art. Terrific. [10/19/1999] --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music