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RE: The Sound of Music

The Capitol 2-track of The Music Man is my absolute favorite, and IMO one of the finest cast recordings ever made. I believe it was Capitol's very first stereo cast album, released before the advent of stereo on vinyl. The original Capitol MONO LP is also exceptionally good, with - surprisingly - much of the spatial quality of the stereo version.

Columbia's Broadway cast recording of My Fair Lady was great, but only available on LP in mono, as the show predated the company's stereo recording. So for stereo we're left with the London cast album, a decidedly mixed bag sonically. Some of the musical numbers are terrific, and some pretty awful due to problematic voice capture. Columbia was obviously not at home in London. This can be heard on the LP and both the 2- and 4-track tapes. Yet it's worth owning in either tape version.

For The King and I and Carousel, I'd recommend the RCA 4-track tapes with the Lincoln Center casts over the Capitol 2-tracks. The latter are 2-channel mixes taken from 4-channel film soundtracks - really not up to the standards of most live cast recordings.

West Side Story - another Goddard Lieberson production - is in a class by itself, for the music/lyrics, vibrant performance, and superlative sound. Apart from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, I believe WST was
Columbia's very first cast recording in stereo, done in 1957. I have both the early dupe 4-track and the 2-track (two reel) and they are nearly equal in sonic quality.

Another great one on Columbia is Gypsy, which, like WST, has lyrics by Stephen sondheim. I'm presently listening to an early dupe 4-track and the recording is as good as it gets. The 2-track is a trifle more robust, but both are very similar. Ethel Merman's voice (she'd belt it out in the theater without any amplification) is perfectly captured on tape.



Edits: 12/26/14
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  • RE: The Sound of Music - michael22 17:04:44 12/26/14 (0)
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