The Hollywood Bowl On Broadway

Album review

While this album consists of symphonic renderings of music first heard on the Broadway stage, John Mauceri has deliberately sought out versions specifically made for orchestral, not theatrical performance. Carousel: A Symphonic Portrait is Morton Gould's arrangement of music from Richard Rodgers's Carousel; Slaughter On Tenth Avenue was a Rodgers ballet used in On Your Toes; Kurt Weill Songbook For Orchestra is another Gould creation; Free And Easy: Concert Suite From Blues Opera is an abridged version of Samuel Matlowsky's orchestration of music from Harold Arlen's operatic revision of St. Louis Woman; and Show Boat: Scenario For Orchestra was a symphonic treatment of music from Show Boat created by its composer, Jerome Kern, 14 years after the show opened on Broadway, orchestrated by Chas Miller. Since all the pieces were intended for symphonic performance to begin with, they may not actually offer the exploration of "the symphonic possibilities" Mauceri says in his liner notes was his aim, but they are certainly a cut above mere overtures. Theater music fans may be offended by Mauceri's asking whether such music has "the potential for symphonic development and a kind of higher, more complex level of interpretation than it would as a simple song," the kind of question only a classical music snob would even consider. But a listen to the music suggests not only that the question may be worth thinking about, but that the composers themselves did and in these instances actually strove for it.

© William Ruhlmann /TiVo