Cast Album



The Sound of Music: 50th Anniversary Edition (SONY



Masterworks). How do you solve a problem like a movie? When “The Sound of Music” came out on film, it was such a hit that for generations afterward, it eclipsed the original Broadway soundtrack. Anyone who grew up with the movie will probably find it fascinating to hear the original show. I sure did.



From the beginning, the inflections are different—you get the slightly exaggerated theater diction, heftier voices and, in general, slower tempos. The nuns get more time in the spotlight. And Maria is more womanly, more wise, than the girlish Julie Andrews. Mary Martin was in her 40s when she sang the part. On the other hand, Theodore Bikel, who created the role of Captain Von Trapp, was only in his mid-30s. The miracles of the stage!



It’s a change, but I found Martin, whose voice was not the instrument of perfection that Julie Andrews’ was, more human and endearing than her successor. Bikel, with his rich voice and adorable German accent, is warmer and more complicated than the icy Christopher Plummer. Part of the reason for that might lie in something he told The Buffalo News a few years ago, when he was here to play Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.” Bikel said then that he had liked playing the captain, and had wanted to play him in the movie. He was bitter that the part had gone to Plummer, who was vocal in his dislike of it.



Why couldn’t Bikel play the captain in the movie? I asked him that, and he explained that he and Martin were seen as a team, and while she could get away with playing a very young woman on stage, she couldn’t on film. “I could have done the movie, but they couldn’t cast me and not cast her,” he said.



On the phone, Bikel was a lot more like the formal Captain von Trapp than he was like the garrulous Tevye. But he confessed that being Jewish, and resenting Austrian anti-Semitism, he could not respond to the patriotism of “Edelweiss”— a last-minute addition to the show that, ironically, Rodgers and Hammerstein had tailored specifically to him. Listening to him sing it, you would not sense his reservations. There’s a trouper.



The Broadway version unfortunately lacks some good songs from the movie. Instead of the wistful “Something Good,” you get “An Ordinary Couple,” an ordinary song. There’s no “I Have Confidence.” But two characters I love, the Baroness and Uncle Max, get their own comic number, “How Can Love Survive?” That makes up for it.



I could have done without the three bonus tracks: a “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” in Swedish (who cares?), an “Edelweiss” from the Vienna Volksoper, and a spoof by Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett (come on, the show is such a big, slow target). “The Sound of Music” will go on well enough without them. Bikel has also pointed out that “Edelweiss” was Hammerstein’s last song, and the last word he wrote was “forever.” Hammerstein probably never guessed how right he was.



??? 1/2 ( Mary Kunz Goldman)



Jazz



Ike Sturm, “Jazz Mass” performed by Loren Stillman, Donny McCaslin, Ingrid Jensen and others (Sturm Records).



Duke Ellington notwithstanding, jazz doesn’t have a particularly distinguished history of producing sacred music (even Ellington’s sacred concerts tend to be forgotten). Bassist and composer Ike Sturm’s “Jazz Mass” isn’t going to be anybody’s idea of the jazz competition for Bach’s “Mass in B-Minor,” the Beethoven “Missa Solemnis,” the Bruckner Masses or the Faure, Mozart and Verdi Requiems, but it’s very pretty music on its own, if not quite “beautiful” in the way people might want a Mass to be. Ike Sturm gathered some superb musicians for this project, a choir and string orchestra, and the result is both impressive and memorable. ??? 1/2



(Jeff Simon)



Classical



Carols by Candlelight, The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, Bill Ives, director (Harmonia



Mundi). This is the fabled choir that, since the days of Henry VI, has been singing from the tower at daybreak for Oxford’s famous May Day celebration. And you should see these adorable, bespectacled tykes in the winter, walking in their robes through the snow, the age-old buildings of Oxford behind them. Currently led by one of the King’s Singers, the group has a timeless sound. The 23 hymns here, including three Bach organ interludes, take a serious approach to Advent as a time of prayer. But there are some you’ll know, including the German medieval carol “In Dulci Jubilo,” J. Gardner’s quirky, charming “Tomorrow Will Be My Dancing Day”—not the one you usually hear, but it grew on me—and “OCome, OCome, Emmanuel.” Along the way are all kinds of hidden treasures including plainsong, Ralph Vaughan Williams, a beautiful Palestrina “Rorate caeli” and Max Reger’s incredibly lovely “Mary’s Cradle Song.” Of all this year’s Christmas CDs, I would not be surprised if this winds up being the one I love best.



????( M. K. G.)



•••



Charles Ives, Decoration Day, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Other Works performed



by Malmo Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Chorus, conducted by James Sinclair (Naxos).



“Once when Igor Stravinsky was asked how he would define a 'masterpiece'

in music, he defined it with ‘Decoration Day,’ the 1912-13 tone poem by Charles Ives” that eventually became part of “Holiday Symphony,” says Jan Swafford in his notes to this disc. Ives’ polytonal collages still sound contemporary and original almost a full century later. Three of the four constituent parts of Ives’ holiday symphony are here. While Sinclair can be (and has been) a great conductor of Ives on disc, neither the Malmo Symphony nor the recorded sound of this disc are really altogether adequate for the demands of the music. The disc, then, is functional but not the arresting thing Ives discs can be. ???



(J. S.)



Pop



“A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector” (Phil Spector Records/Legacy). It really wasn’t necessary for fabled pop-producing genius Phil Spector to be locked up for life for the murder of Lana Clarkson to think that his much ballyhooed Christmas album is among the most overpraised in the history of American popular music. To say that it’s the greatest rock Christmas album ever is, to some people, like saying that something is the tastiest frozen corn dog you can buy. The disc is better than that. But what can’t really be avoided is that Spector’s “girl groups” tended to sound alike whether they were called The Ronettes, the Crystals or whatever. There’s no question that Spector’s “Wall of Sound” was terrific under all circumstances (who else could give work to those who played the glockenspiel?) but if you can listen to Spector’s final personal message of holiday cheer over “Silent Night” without wanting someone arrested, you may be made of marshmallows and tinsel yourself.



???( J. S.)



•••



Vera Lynn, “We’ll Meet Again: The Very Best of Vera



Lynn” (Decca). Those of us who knew her at all tended to know only the gloriously black comic ending of “Dr. Strangelove,” in which Slim Pickens riding a bucking H-bomb onto the “Rooskis” in Moscow was followed by Lynn’s nostalgic World War II anthem: “We’ll meet again/ don’t know where/ don’t know when.” And for all the caustic burn of Stanley Kubrick’s apocalyptic joke, there was something genuinely haunting about that voice and that song. Flash-forward 44 years after the premiere of Kubrick’s movie. The complete remastered Beatles are about to be released. And what was the No. 1 hit in England? This disc of Vera Lynn’s music from World War II and after— “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover,” “Auf Weidersehn, Sweetheart,” “As Time Goes By,” “Harbour Lights” and “When I Grow Too Old to Dream.” Many, like “We’ll Meet Again,” come complete with semi-pro choruses singing along for wartime and postwar solidarity and poignance. Our wars are different, our soldiers are different, and, Lord knows, our music couldn’t possibly be more different. But Lynn—who is still with us in her 80s—was a beautiful singer and this stuff is really quite wonderful. ????( J. S.)