Helen Sjoholm, Russell Watson - Kristina: At Carnegie Hall
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CD Details
Artist: Helen Sjoholm, Russell WatsonComposer: Benny Andersson
Composer: Bjorn Ulvaeus
Conductor: Paul Gemignani
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
Format: Soundtrack
CD Release Date: 2010-05-04
Music Label: Decca
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- Overture
- Path Of Leaves And Needles
- Where You Go I Go With You
- Stone Kingdom
- Down To The Sea
- A Bad Harvest
- N o!
- He's Our Pilot
- Never
- Golden Wheat Fields
- All Who Are Grieving
- We Open Up The Gateways
- Peasants At Sea
- Lice
- In The Dead Of Darkness
- A Sunday In Battery Park
- Home
- American Man
- Dreams Of Gold
- Summer Rose
- Emperors And Kings
- Twilight Images Calling
- Queen Of The Prairie
- Wild Grass
- Gold Can Turn To Sand
- Wildcat Money
- To The Sea
- Miracle Of God
- Down To The Waterside
- Miscarriage
- You Have To Be There
- Here I Am Again
- With Child Again
- Rising From Myth And Legend
- I'll Be Waiting There
Music reviews of Kristina: At Carnegie Hall
Music Review: "Kristina" Rings All the Bells
Rating: 5 Stars
I am always quite surprised that individuals listen to a concert recording and draw inferences about the actual, fully staged production. The concerts, both in Minnesota some years ago and in New York City recently, as gloriously they were produced were mere shadows of the full production with much of Molberg's exceptional dialogue included and fleshed out by minimalistic but often stunning Robert Wagner sets.
As an example, the concert did not produce one powerfully evoked image from the full production. As the crescendo builds of the show's final song, a swing--the swing Kristina playfully rode while waiting for Karl Oscar--appears from the wings and soars back and forth across the stage. It is a brilliant coup de theater that elicits a paradoxical sense of joy.
The swing is never even mentioned in the concert.
More to the point, the music is truly among the best ever written for the musical stage with intimations of Wagner, Dvorak, Puccini, and even Rogers and Hammerstein. The penultimate piece, a haunting choral--"Rising from Myth and Legend"
has all the grandeur of a Bach Oratorio.
It is my opinion that a blanket condemnation of the lyrics as "trite" is remarkably wide of the mark. The additional criticism that they are about "things" rather than emotions might have me wonder if the person who suggested that even heard the lyrics.
There are 34 songs from the concert, as look at the lyrics, by my count TWO are about "things"--the unlistenable "Lice" and "Queen of the Prairie". I'm not going to bother turning this review into an epic by citing lyrics from the other 32 songs
to demolish the criticism that the lyrics are comprehensively banal but a few will surfice:
From "Never" sung by Ulrika, the town prostitute which is a bitter lament against her persecutors, the hypocrites who bartered for her body:
"Righteous congregation
Pillars of the Nation
I am in your debt evermore...
Men came in the darkness
Scratching at my window
Men I know by sight--and by name
They bought their share of me...
Councilmen and churchmen
How they came a-wooing
Stealing home in silence and shame
Their shame is my renewing"
Later in the musical, Robert mortally ill and cast off by the older brother he loved as a cheat contemplates a stream making its way to the sea
" Free, you are free
Not a slave, not like me
Choosing your way
As you please
At your ease
You are your own master.
Soon you will rise
To the crest of a wave
To be one with the sea everlasting
On giant shoulders you'll carry sailors
In tall white galleons
To far horizons..."
There is much more of Walt Whitman in such language than Don Black.
Again, I could cite example after example but there is little to be gained. Should one make the effort and dig deep enough one could find couplets in the works of e.e. cummings or Yeats that do not go down so easily.
On balance, "Kristina" is an astonishing piece. As concerts do, this one is like most others: it does not convey anything close to the power of the full production but it does suggest Trevor Nunn may be on to something when he suggested "Kristina"
was the best thing he heard in ages and a critic whose name escapes me said, "I have seen the future of musical theater and it's name is "Kristina".
(As an aside, a woman of my acquaintance with an encyclopedic and first-hand knowledge of musical theater spanning 40 years declared "Kristina" to be as extraordinary as the universally praised concert version of "South Pacific" which was also performed at Carnegie Hall a few years ago.)
Description of Kristina: At Carnegie Hall
Kristina is a major musical theater saga, composed by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, original members of the legendary ABBA and composers of the theater and movie sensation, MAMMA MIA! Based on famous Swedish novels of the 1950s, Kristina tells the moving story of several families who left famine plagued Sweden in the 1850s to find a new life in America. This concert performance, recorded live at Carnegie Hall, was a sold out event. The complete recording is a MUST HAVE for fans of the great Benny and Bjorn and musical theater lovers. Recorded live at Carnegie Hall in late 2009, Kristina features internationally renowned performers Russell Watson, Helen Sjoholm, and Louise Pitre (MAMMA MIA!). Broadway legend Paul Gemignani conducts a 50 piece orchestra and 20 member chorus. Elaborate package includes 2 CDs and 48 page booklet containing a synopsis, photographs and complete lyrics.Broadway & Vocalists CDs
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