My Favorite Things: A Richard Rodgers Celebration

List Price: $8.99
Our Price: $4.85
You Save: $4.14 (46%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.26 (click here)
Category: Music CD
See more CD details

CD Details

Music reviews of My Favorite Things: A Richard Rodgers Celebration

Music Review: A Mixed Bag
Rating: 3 Stars

Otherwise, the most satisfying selections on the disc are the Main Title from the film version of "Oklahoma!" (the work of Robert Russell Bennett), the overture to "Babes in Arms" (Don Walker's orchestration captures the spirit of the Broadway original in full orchestra terms), "D-Day" (Lockhart paces it more as a jaunty march than an epic one), and the "Carousel Waltz."

I confess that I like big-orchestra arrangements of show music even though I know I'm not supposed to, but the remaining instrumental numbers are played in arrangements (by Sammy Nestico, Don Sebesky, and Alexander Courage) that I don't like. They are mostly fussy, heavy, lacking in fun, and tinged with elements from the Big Band era that sound out of place in these surroundings. It's too bad Hollenbeck didn't do these arrangements, too. Failing that, the Pops music library must still have arrangements Bennett, Leroy Anderson, and Richard Hayman did of Rodgers scores, and I don't understand why they weren't used here. They never wear out their welcome.

The singers are uniformly disasters. Martina McBride ("My Favorite Things"), Jason Danieley ("I Have Dreamed"), and Collin Raye ("The Sound of Music") are described on the label as "vocalists." The term tells you all you need to know about their lack of any sense of the appropriate style for their numbers. They are club, not theater, singers. Their vocalizings can't hurt Rodgers, but they are jarring to the listener in the context of the rest of this disc. Their voices, as voices, are mediocre, and the arrangements (each by a different person) of the pieces don't help. (Some comparably dubious items have been included in most recent Pops recordings. Each has some interesting, unusual things along with others that don't really belong. I wonder if they are the price Lockhart has to pay in order to record the interesting stuff.)

The Boston Symphony and Pops were the orchestras I grew up with, so it hurts to have to say that this disc is such a mixed bag.

(By the way, Nelson Riddle recorded an LP of his own splendid arrangements of the principal numbers from "Oklahoma!", and I wish Capitol would resurrect it from the vaults as a salute to Rodgers's memory in his centennial year.)

Description of My Favorite Things: A Richard Rodgers Celebration

Classical CDs

• Music > Styles
• Pop
• Soundtracks