Broadway: The Great Original Cast Recordings
Sony celebrated the millennium with its mammoth 26-CD collection,Soundtrack for a Century, but fortunately starving actors and other theater lovers can satisfy themselves with the 2-CD installment,Broadway: The Great Original Cast Recordings. Beginning with what most consider the dawn of the modern musical,Show Boat, the set goes on to sample songs fromKiss Me, Kate(the first cast recording issued on LP) and many other of the greatest shows ever written for the stage (My Fair LadyandWest Side Storyhave the most selections--three each). The set is limited to recordings from the Columbia Records vault, but it was a treasure trove under the primary direction of producer Goddard Lieberson. The 1940s and '50s are marked by major shows by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, and Leonard Bernstein, to name only a few, while the 1960s and '70s see new takes on the traditional forms, withCabaretand works by the young Stephen Sondheim (evenAnyone Can Whistle). Things begin to thin out in the last two decades of the century, as Columbia missed out on the mature Sondheim, the Andrew Lloyd Webber & Co. blockbusters, and the surge in revivals; the '80s are represented byNineand the '90s by Cy Coleman'sWill Rogers FolliesandThe Life. Of course, it's impossible to capture a whole century of Broadway music in only 153 minutes, but few fans could quibble with more than a handful of these smart selections. Practically worth the price of the package itself is the beautiful 64-page booklet, which includes an essay by Frank Rich, notes on every show, plus some brief sidebars, album covers and theater posters, and photos from both the stage and recording studios.--David Horiuchi