MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK AmazonUS
Download: Classicsonline

 

Frederick LOEWE (1901–1988)
My Fair Lady (1956)
Original Broadway Cast Recording
1. Overture [3:01]
2. Why can’t the English [2:41]
3. Wouldn’t it be loverly [3:58]
4. With a little bit of luck [4:08]
5. I’m an ordinary man [4:39]
6. Just you wait [2:43]
7. The rain in Spain [2:41]
8. I could have danced all night [3:30]
9. Ascot gavotte [3:15]
10. On the street where you live [2:57]
11. You did it [4:23]
12. Show me [2:12]
13. Get me to the church on time [2:43]
14. A hymn to him [3:30]
15. Without you [2:03]
16. I’ve grown accustomed to her face [4:04]
17. Finale [1:10]
Julie Andrews – Eliza Doolittle; Rex Harrison – Henry Higgins; Robert Coote – Colonel Pickering; Stanley Holloway – Alfred Doolittle; Philippa Bevans – Mrs Pearce – Gordon Dilworth – Harry; Rod McLennan – Jamie; John Michael King – Freddy Eynsford-Hill; Reid Skelton, Glenn Kezer, James Morris, Herb Surface – Cockneys; Orchestra / Franz Allers
18. The embassy waltz [2:44]
Percy Faith & His Orchestra
Lyrics By Lerner
The Day Before Spring:
19. A jug of wine [4:00]
Brigadoon:
20. Almost like being in love [1:54]
21. The heather on the hill [3:07]
22. There but for you go I [2:20]
23. Love of my life [3:15]
Kaye Ballard (19-21, 23), Alan Jay Lerner (22); Billy Taylor (piano), Allen Hanlon (guitar), Milt Hinton or Clyde Lombard (bass), Herb Harris or Percy Brice (drums)
rec. New York, 26 March 1956 (1-17), 17 April 1956 (18), 1955 (19-23)
NAXOS 8.120876 [72:07]

 

Experience Classicsonline


Within roughly eighteen months two of Broadway’s most successful and long-lived musicals were premiered: My Fair Lady on 15 March 1956 and West Side Story on 26 September 1957. Leonard Bernstein’s Romeo and Juliet-based show ran for 732 performances in the original production while Frederick Loewe’s and Alan Jay Lerner’s Bernard Shaw adaptation reached no less than 2717 performances. Both musicals were later filmed and for the 1964 My Fair Lady movie director George Cukor brought over Rex Harrison’s Higgins as well as Stanley Holloway’s Alfred Doolittle. Julie Andrews was rejected in favour of Audrey Hepburn, who was supposed to be a more selling name, in spite of not being able to sing the part. She had to mime to the voice of Marni Nixon. Julie Andrews eventually got her due in films like Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. In 1958 it reached London and on 3 February 1959 it opened at the Oscarsteatern in Stockholm. The original Swedish cast was also recorded and all the songs were frequently heard on the radio – I learnt them that way. There have been at least two revivals in Stockholm and on 12 September this year (2008) still another production will be mounted at Oscars.

Original cast recordings tend to capture the atmosphere of a musical better than any later assumptions and this My Fair Lady is no exception. When Columbia set it down just a week and a half after the stage premiere the entire cast was still fresh and enjoying themselves greatly. This is very obvious when one returns to it after a good many years. It is worth noting that all seventeen numbers were recorded in a single day. Clearly everyone was on the ball. Franz Allers, known to operetta lovers through a great number of classic Viennese operetta recordings, conducts the score with obvious relish and ideal tempos. The readings of the central roles are classics with the young Julie Andrews fresh as dew and hilariously cockneyish. Her wrath is really tangible in Just you wait, ’enry ’iggins. Her father is memorably acted by Stanley Holloway and Rex Harrison has probably never been surpassed, not even by his slightly older self in the film version. John Michael King sings well as Freddy and it is interesting to find James Morris, who later became one of the greatest Wagner singers in the world, as one of the cockneys. When this was recorded he was not yet twenty. As a bonus we also get The Embassy Waltz, recorded by Percy Faith and His Orchestra a couple of weeks later. There was obviously not room enough for that music on the original LP.

A further bonus is five songs from two other Lerner & Loewe collaborations, The Day Before Spring and Brigadoon. Four of them are sung by the splendidly expressive Kaye Ballard, including a riveting vaudeville number as the final track, and There But For You Go I is charmingly sung by Mr Lerner himself.

The sound is not up to today’s standard but is more than acceptable. There are other recordings on the market, besides the film sound-track Decca recorded it with Jeremy Irons as Higgins, Kiri Te Kanawa as Eliza and Jerry Hadley as a classy Freddy. I have always liked that disc but nothing can beat the present original cast recording. A necessary purchase for every lover of this immortal musical comedy.

Göran Forsling

see also Review by Patrick Gary






 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.