Search - Various Artists :: Overtures of Broadway

Broadway Overtures Shouldn't All Sound The Same, ShouldThey?

Michael B. Scheff | Los Angeles, CA USA | 10/18/2000

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I love the overtures to Broadway shows, so I was more than a little disappointed at this 3 CD set. Although the liner notes boast that the original orchestrations were used throughout I find that a little hard to believe, since the selection of instruments seems the same in almost all of the overtures presented, with a preponderance of trumpets and heavy reliance on saxaphones--Kind of the Guy Lombardo approach. Worse, some of the music you know by heart, like the overture to "West Side Story" is so mis-interpreted and played with such bizarre tempi that at times one is not exactly sure what musical one is listening to. Still, some of the overtures are not played half-bad and with all its blemishes it is the only collection of its kind that I know of. This collection could have been outstanding if only someone had given the various Conductors the original cast recordings to steer them in the right direction as far as interpretation goes. That's the Producer's job and it makes me wonder where he was during the recording sessions. Oh, well. I listen to it a lot anyway and simply tell the CD player to skip the selections I can't stand. Only the Buddha is perfect, I guess."

Not perfect, but still exciting

William Supon | Cedartown, GA USA | 08/05/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is really a pretty good set. What another reviewer seems to ignore is that a lot of these shows are from the 40's, 50's, and 60's, when "Guy Lombardo" style arrangements were the norm. Since there were never enough strings, the arrangers (Robert Russell Bennett, Don Walker and many more) used a lot of trumpet and sax leads to get the sound out of the pit and over the voices of the chattering audience. Anyway, I think it's a good representative set. What a shame that "show tunes" has become a pejorative. The tunes on this disk make up a large part of the Great American Songbook!"