CDs: Bless My Homeland Forever
Before discussing the latest cast recording of The Sound of Music, let's take a quick look at the score's many previous recordings. Two factors are of particular importance when surveying these discs. The first is the lady playing Maria, for the show is a star vehicle and can't fully succeed without a radiant presence at its center. The second is the question of which version of the score is employed. Because of the enormous success of the film, most productions since the mid-'60s have altered the original stage text to reflect changes made for the movie.
The latter issue doesn't apply, of course, to the first three recordings of the show, all of which preceded the film. One must begin with Columbia/Sony's original 1959 cast album, which offers a wonderful performance, headed by Mary Martin, for whom the show was written. Martin's long-established stage personality and innate spirituality connect with Maria's songs, especially the title number, "My Favorite Things," and the reprise of "Sixteen Going on Seventeen," in a way that no subsequent star quite managed. There's a gloriously sung Mother Abbess from Patricia Neway, the finest account of the role on disc. And there's flawless work by Theodore Bikel, Marion Marlowe, Kurt Kasznar, and Lauri Peters.
The 1961 London production played almost twice as long as the Broadway version and had no need of a star: The West End's first Maria was Jean Bayless, who had followed future Maria Julie Andrews in the Broadway Boy Friend. EMI's London cast recording is decent but dull, lacking a single memorable performance.
The next version is of greater interest. That's because it stars soprano June Bronhill, a major operetta and musical-theatre singer in her native Australia and in England. Bronhill starred in the 1961 Australian production of The Sound of Music, and the EMI recording made from it is splendid.
The London production was still running when the movie opened, and here's where the musical program changed. With Oscar Hammerstein deceased, Richard Rodgers wrote music and lyrics for two new songs, "I Have Confidence" and "Something Good," the latter replacing the stodgier "An Ordinary Couple." "My Favorite Things" was no longer a Maria/Mother Abbess duet, but instead took the place of "The Lonely Goatherd" in the storm scene, with the latter song relegated to a puppet-show sequence. Both of the Max-Elsa numbers, "How Can Love Survive?" and "No Way to Stop It," were cut, and the film opened with Maria's title song, rather than with the nuns' "Preludium."
A generation or more learned the Sound of Music score from RCA Victor's film soundtrack, which features a superb Julie Andrews, who manages a perfect blend of soprano and chest/show voice. The next stage production that got recorded was the lavish and successful 1981 London revival that marked the musical-theatre stage debut of singer Petula Clark. On the Epic cast album, Clark employs many of her trademark pop mannerisms but makes them all work for the music, offering a completely new take on the material. Playing the Mother Abbess is none other than June Bronhill. One of the Max-Elsa numbers, "No Way to Stop It," was cut. As in the film, "My Favorite Things" was shifted to the storm scene, and, to make up for it, Bronhill got a special version of "A Bell Is No Bell" which does not appear to have been used in any other production. Also reflecting the film, the Clark recording brings in "Confidence" and "Something Good." "Lonely Goatherd" turned up in a scene at a local fair.
Australia saw the show again in 1983, and the Maria was popular vocalist Julie Anthony, who starred in both the Australian and London revivals of Irene. EMI's cast album includes "Confidence" and "Something Good," but retains the original placement and singers of "Favorite Things" and "Goatherd." Anthony is a very smooth vocalist, but she's more exciting on the London Irene recording.
1998 saw the first Broadway revival, and RCA recorded it. It too features the two songs written for the film, along with the shift of "Favorite Things." "Goatherd" was moved to the near-closing concert sequence. Rebecca Luker sounds lovely as always, but one misses the colorful personality and distinctive style of a Martin, Andrews, or Clark. The Broadway revival was reproduced, with a native cast, in Australia in 1999, and that version produced a pleasant, live BMG cast recording, co-starring Lisa McCune and John Waters.
Mention should be made of several studio recordings. In 1988, the score received the crossover treatment from Telarc, with opera singers Frederica von Stage, Hakan Hagegard, and Eileen Farrell in leading roles. This set is the only one that includes all of the stage and film songs combined, and if the performance is less than thrilling, it features nothing as egregious as the crossover version of another Martin/R&H show, South Pacific.
And there are at least five British studio recordings. A Music for Pleasure disc stars Anne Rogers who in London created Julie Andrews' Boy Friend role and later replaced Andrews in the London My Fair Lady, with Patricia Routledge as the Mother Abbess. Another version on Pickwick co-stars Liz Robertson and Denis Quilley. There's RCA's disc of the actual Trapp Family Singers offering their interpretation of the score; U.S. national tour star Florence Henderson singing five songs from the show backed on the other side of the LP by songs from Fiorello!; and Mexican, Dutch, and Swedish foreign-language cast recordings.
Which brings us to the latest Sound of Music CD, and a major entry in the show's recorded history. Vienna's long-running Volksoper is a company that performs a repertory of grand opera, operetta, and musical comedy. In February of this year, the company presented The Sound of Music. Not only was it the work's Volksoper premiere, but it was the first fully-staged production of The Sound of Music in Austria, which is, of course, the country where the story takes place.
There appears to be in Austria a lingering prejudice against The Sound of Music. That's probably because the true-life story of the von Trapps is inextricably linked with political events of the period. As The London Times put it, because of "the issues that lurk beneath the musical....{the Volksoper production} barges into a very quiet debate about Austria's role in the Second World War." There's also a certain amount of resentment over the fact that The Sound of Music, thanks to its universally beloved film version, represents, for better or worse, Austrian culture to much of the world.
Performed in German with English surtitles, the Volksoper production was a hit, and it may be the case that the musical works better for local audiences in its original stage form. In The New York Times, Richard Bernstein wrote that the stage version's Austria is "a country where, even as Captain von Trapp bravely refuses to collaborate, most of his friends willingly or at least resignedly, do so, capitulating to the Nazis out of cowardice, or social snobbery, or economic interest." Because of the stage version's greater emphasis on politics, it may engage Austrians more than the somewhat softer film version.
As the recently released, sixty-five-minute, live 2005 Viennese cast recording reveals, this is one of the most traditional Sound of Music productions for some time. With the exception of substituting "Something Good" for "An Ordinary Couple," the Volksoper production, unlike so many recent mountings, follows the original stage text. For example, it retains "My Favorite Things" as an early Maria/Mother Abbess duet, and keeps "The Lonely Goatherd" in the storm scene. And "I Have Confidence" does not appear.
American musical director Erich Kunzel conducts an orchestra of fifty-two players, which makes for one of the lusher recordings of the score. Because this is, like the previous Sound of Music stage-cast CD, a live recording, it includes applause; lead-in dialogue; the "Sixteeen Going on Seventeen" dance music; some incidental scene-change music; the full scene that surrounds the "Sound of Music" reprise with the Captain; and the curtain call, with the audience clapping along to the music. "Do-Re-Mi" is called "C-D-E," and a portion of the title song is sung in English.
With something of a pop sound, leading lady Sandra Pires employs a mix of chest belt and head tones, and while her voice is light and thin on top, she's appealing. If she's not one of the role's strongest singers, she manages to project a winsome personality. An operatic bass-baritone, Michael Kraus sings the Captain with more voice than is usual in the role. Heidi Brunner is fine, if a bit vibrato-heavy, as the Mother Abbess, and the Elsa Renate Pitscheider and Max Peter Pikl are excellent in their two spots.
This is a highly theatrical, satisfying recording. But then, as so many other recordings have already demonstrated, The Sound of Music is indestructible.