Beauty And The Beast: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
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CD Details
Composer: Alan MenkenEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language); French (Original Language)
Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered, Soundtrack
CD Release Date: 1991-11-01
Music Label: Walt Disney Records
Soundtracks:
- Prologue - Alan Menken
- Belle
- Belle (Reprise)
- Gaston
- Gaston (reprise)
- Be Our Guest
- Something there
- The Mob Song
- Beauty and the Beast
- To the Fair
- West Wing
- The Beast Lets Belle Go
- Battle on the Tower
- Transformation
- Beauty and the Beast [Duet]
Music reviews of Beauty And The Beast: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Music Review: Classic Disney film's score, songs are a thing of beauty
Rating: 4 Stars
Although I tend to watch action/adventure and science fiction films more than I do kid-friendly family fare, I do on occasion like to tap into my more sentimental side and watch a Walt Disney film. Not that I have many in my home video library; I only own Fantasia (1940) and Beauty and the Beast (1991). Both are wonderfully rendered in visual and musical terms, but I was so taken by Alan Menken's music and the late Howard Ashman's lyrics for Beauty and the Beast that I bought the original soundtrack album a few days after watching the first animated film seriously considered for a Best Picture nomination.
Beauty and the Beast was the crowning achievement for the Menken and Ashman team, surpassing 1989's The Little Mermaid, and it would be their final collaboration, for Ashman died shortly after completing the lyrics. But the success of both film and the soundtrack album is proof of the timelessness and general appeal of Beauty and the Beast's songs.
Starting with Menken's darkly-tinged underscore for David Ogden Stiers' voiceover introduction in Prologue (Track 1), the music starts casting its magical spell on the listener, then with deftness worthy of a David Copperfield or David Blaine, the marvelous opening number Belle introduces us to the beautiful protagonist (voice of Paige O'Hara) and to the various inhabitants of the small French village where Belle, a young maiden who lives with her father Maurice, a widower who also likes to believe he's a great inventor. She's a typical Disney heroine -- a forward-thinking lass who yearns to venture in the great wide somewhere and be more than she is in her society -- but O'Hara's voice is so lovely and the role so wonderfully written that the stereotypes are transcended. The opening number also introduces us to the vain, handsome, yet slimy Gaston (voice of Richard White), the village heartthrob and super-macho hunter extraordinaire who is determined to make Belle his wife.
(His song, Gaston [track 4] is not only revelatory about his personality quirks as a egotist without equal, but is a fine showcase for White's wonderful baritone voice.)
In addition to the aforementioned tracks, Ashman and Menken's best songs -- if I had to choose just three -- are:
Be Our Guest, one of the big showstopper tunes and one of the best. Jerry Orbach of Law & Order fame joins forces with Angela Lansbury (Murder, She Wrote) in a rousing Busby Berkeley-inspired number that gives new meaning to the term Dinner Theater
Something There (track 7), heard when the Beast (voice of Robby Benson) and Belle realize that they are, despite their differences and circumstances, falling in love. It's a very appealing song simply because it's so universal; those of us who have had any experiences at relationships -- even the illusory Internet romances that seem to be in vogue as of late can easily relate to Something There's theme of realizing that, yes, I feel something surpringly and wonderful for someone else.
Beauty and the Beast (track 9), Angela Lansbury's beautiful rendition of the film's best known single sums up the themes of the movie (love conquers even vast differences, love is timeless) in a wonderful and understated way.
With the exception of The Mob Song (track 8) and a final choral rendition of Beauty and the Beast at the coda of Transformation (track 14), the balance of the movie's music is instrumental underscore for action scenes (The Beast Lets Belle Go [track 12]; Battle on the Tower [13]) as the film heads toward the resolution of the Belle-Beast-Gaston triangle.
For many Celine Dion fans, the highlight of this CD will be her duet with Peabo Bryson in the end credits reprise of the title song. It's a more 1990s contemporary version, but it fits nicely, and for Dion fans it's a must-hear, since it was one of her early English-language recordings.
I don't listen to this album very often, but when I do, the music carries me to a time and place where life was not as complicated, love triumphed over adversity, and everything was possible as long as you wished upon a star...and dared to dream boldly.
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