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Peter Pan is Leonard Bernstein's least-known musical--or at least chunk of a musical. Featuring four Bernstein songs, the show opened on Broadway in 1950; it starred Jean Arthur (then nearly 50!) as Peter Pan and Boris Karloff as Captain Hook. The show used Alec Wilder's underscore, but Bernstein had composed one as well, and his finally sees the light of day on this CD after years of research and restoration by conductor Alexander Frey. Was it worth the effort? Absolutely. Bernstein fans will of course crave the CD, but it should delight newcomers as well. The instrumental tracks display a wide stylistic palette, and the songs are simply wonderful. Just check out "Who Am I" (sung by Linda Eder) and you will hear a ballad as lovely as any‹cabaret singers in search of rare material would be well advised to look into it. Baritone Daniel Nardiccio does warm justice to Bernstein's near-operatic passages in "Pirate Song" and "Captain Hook's Soliloquy" (reminiscent of Candide). As if this weren't enough, the CD concludes with the wistful "Spring Will Come Again," which Bernstein had written for a possible musical adaptation of The Skin of Our Teeth. --Elisabeth Vincentelli
Some lovely music, but don't trust everything you read in the
bookletReviewed by Alan, 2008-05-18
There is much to recommend about this recording of Leonard
Bernstein's incidental and vocal music written for the 1950
Broadway production of "Peter Pan," which starred Jean Arthur and
Boris Karloff. Most (though not all) of the vocal music has been
commercially recorded before, but the incidental music hasn't been,
with one partial exception: track 20 -- "Tinkerbell Sick!
Tinkerbell Lives!" -- contains a bit of ballet music from "On the
Town."
As is often the case with incidental music for plays, many of the
numbers are quite short. Some of the music is nothing special and
can't be said to represent Bernstein at anything like his best, but
some is quite lovely.
The orchestral performance here is generally very clean and the
playing is nicely expressive. Conductor Alexander Frey deserves
credit for that, as well for being the person who got this music
back out there.
Linda Eder sings Wendy's songs. (Peter doesn't sing at all in this
version, which isn't really a full musical.) She understandably
eschews her usual style to try to sound like an adolescent girl,
singing mostly in head voice and with little vibrato. Because of
this, I find her sound rather piercing and somewhat unpleasant at
times. While she's putting forth a good effort that I have to
admire, I do wish that she had managed to sound less piercing. It's
not as if all adolescent girls sound that way when they sing.
I also wish she had managed to convey a bit more specificity in her
phrasing of the lyrics. When I listen to Marcia Henderson on the
recording of the 1950 production, I hear someone who wasn't much of
a singer but who knew how to convey lyrics.
The other major soloist, Daniel Narducci, playing Captain Hook,
sings quite well, but he isn't ideal casting. Boris Karloff on the
1950 recording makes much more of the words in the music that he
sings (which doesn't include "Captain Hook's Soliloquy," heard on
this recording but which was not in the 1950 Broadway production).
And Karloff is funny. For one thing, he doesn't have a very
pleasant voice so when he sings "Eat blood! Drink blood! Think
blood! Dream blood!" to Bernstein's mellifluous melody and tries to
sound beautiful, it's funny because he can't manage it. When Daniel
Narducci sings it, he does sound beautiful, which is pleasant but
less interesting. Narducci sings very nicely and he has the right
general idea most of the time, but (as with Eder) his phrasing
lacks specificity and he also lacks the sense of ridiculous
seriousness that would make him funny.
The male chorus of pirates performs well, but the rougher chorus in
the 1950 recording is funnier and more characterful.
"Neverland," a lovely choral number for women, sounds very pretty,
but it might sound better still with a smaller chorus that conveyed
the words more clearly.
I don't want to be too negative about this recording, which I'm
very glad to have. It's an important document, and everyone
involved is talented and accomplished and puts forth a good effort.
I'm just not sure that all of them were the best choices. Still,
there's some very good music here, some of which hasn't been
recorded before, so if you're a Bernstein fan, you're going to want
this.
Now I'll explain the "don't trust everything you read" statement
above: In the booklet for this recording, Alexander Frey writes
that "in the original 1950 production, most of the music was
actually instrumental underscoring ... that had been composed by
Alec Wilder." This is not correct. No music by Alec Wilder was
heard in the 1950 Broadway production.
Some time after this recording was issued, Garth Edwin Sunderland
(one of the orchestrators credited on this recording) did correct
this misinformation in an article that appeared in the Bernstein
Society's publication, "prelude, fugue and riffs." Sunderland
wrote:
"For the original cast recording, Bernstein's instrumental numbers,
for reasons unknown, were replaced with new cues by Alec Wilder
(which has led to the misconception that Bernstein's incidental
music was not used in the Broadway production)."
A number of people knew all along that only Bernstein's music was
heard in the production, among them the writer on Broadway musicals
Ken Mandelbaum, who mentioned it in his online review of the
recording. It's odd that both Frey, who was said to have done years
of research to restore the score, and the people in charge of the
Bernstein estate didn't know such basic information. If such a
basic part of the research wasn't done, it's a little hard to trust
that the rest of the work was done correctly.
Making it odder is that elsewhere in the booklet, notes by Daniel
Felsenfeld quote from opening night reviews that praised Bernstein
for his (as one of the critics put it) "excellent musical
accompaniment for the action." Surely if Wilder had written the
incidental music, the critics would have mentioned Wilder (who was
hardly unknown in 1950) as well as Bernstein. So it really is a bit
of a mystery why Frey and the Bernstein people didn't realize that
Wilder's music wasn't heard in the production.
There's also an incorrect statement in Felsenfeld's notes. He
writes that "Captain Hook's Soliloquy" was one of two vocal numbers
not in the Broadway production "mostly due to lack of vocal ability
on the part of the actors," but the aria wasn't even written till
later, specifically for Lawrence Tibbett, who played Hook in a
post-Broadway tour.
And it would have been nice if the history of "Dream With Me" had
been addressed. As Larry Moore mentions in his Amazon customer's
review of this recording, there's reason to believe that it was
written for "On the Town," although it was not used in that show.
Bernstein wanted to include it in "Peter Pan," but it went unused
there as well. When asked about the song many years later, Adolph
Green, who wrote the lyrics for "On the Town" with Betty Comden,
said that he and Comden wrote the lyric, except perhaps for a few
lines that Bernstein may have contributed. Yet Comden and Green
receive no credit in the booklet here.
Also, Trude Rittman made important contributions to the score, but
they are not mentioned in the notes, though at least she gets
credit as one of the original orchestrators.
WORTHY RECORDING OF LITTLE-KNOWN BERNSTEIN MUSIC.Reviewed by J. T Waldmann, 2006-02-02
Please allow me to add a few comments about this recording for
which Kevin Killian, Michael G. Brennan, Larry Moore and others
have already written excellent reviews. I am in total agreement
with most of their observations, and a say a hearty "Amen" to Mr.
Moore's input regarding the lack of information in the liner
notes.
This is not your ordinary PETER PAN, which you will see upon
removing the disc from the case. You are now staring into the
gaping jaws of a crocodile. Not nearly as popular as the Jule
Styne/Betty Comden/Adolph Green version, and far darker, it's easy
to understand why Bernstein's version is rarely staged. In fact,
it's not really a musical, but rather a play with songs and
incidental music. The handful of songs are all performed by Wendy,
Captain Hook, and the pirates -- "none for Peter, none for Nana,
none for John and Michael." Furthermore, two of the songs included
on this recording ("Captain Hook's Soliloquy" and "Dream with Me")
were dropped from the original production because they were too
difficult for the stars. I guess Boris Karloff just didn't have the
chops to sing Hook's "aria."
Bernstein's incidental music also never made it to Broadway,
perhaps because of its complexity and challenge to the average
Broadway pit orchestra. Instead, Alec Wilder wrote new incidental
music for the play.
Alexander Frey conducts what is called the Amber Orchestra, which I
assume is the orchestra of the Karlin Theater in Prague,
Czechoslovakia, the ensemble he conducts as his "day job."
Orchestra and conductor do great honor to the original
orchestrations by Trude Rittman & Hershy Kay and also to the
additional orchestrations of conductor Frey and others. But, like
Larry Moore, I wish the liner notes would have told us who
orchestrated what. (You can find all that information on
archivmusic.com.) The voices were recorded in New York and later
mixed with the orchestra. Broadway goes Eastern European!
Similarly, not one, but two Eastern European orchestras ar heard on
the recording of SHERRY: the Czech Philharmonic Chamber & the
Bratislava Radio Symphony. Pity it's too costly to record
orchestras in America.
When it comes to writing music for the theater, no one comes close
to Leonard Bernstein. There are multiple recordings of ON THE TOWN,
WONDERFUL TOWN, WEST SIDE STORY, & CANDIDE and now we have
Alexander Frey and the folks at KOCH Classics to thank for
resurrecting and preserving this little known Bernstein score. In
addition to Bernstein's Broadway scores, I enthusiastically
recommend "The White House Cantata" (assembled from the score of
1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE), "The Chichester Psalms," the chamber
opera "Trouble in Tahiti," and any of the fine recording of his
songs.
I doubt if we'll ever see another composer who will write so
beautifully for the American theatre.
A fabulous recording-beautifully sung, beautifully conductedReviewed by Bobby Hemingway, 2005-11-10
A fabulous recording-beautifully sung, beautifully conducted
This world premiere recording of Leonard Bernstein's Peter Pan
should win a Grammy. With a steller cast led by Broadway superstars
Linda Eder and Daniel Narducci, and fabulously conducted by
Alexander Frey (who restored and brought this lost masterpiece to
life), this great music sings and dances for the first time. I'm
absolutely enchanted and you will be as well.
Eder over does it; Frey to be commendedReviewed by Cory, 2005-10-22
For those familiar with the earlier recording of Bernstein's Peter
Pan (Arthur/Karloff), the release of an expanded recording of this
neglected Bernstein work is a real excitement. The tracks include
an indepth study by Frey of the music score, in its wholistic
beauty, including even small segments of under a minute. Other
works are resurrected, originally cut from the final score; why
they would cut "Dream of Me" is beyond me.
However, Eder cast as Wendy does not sit well. Timid, motherly
Wendy is not synonymous with big, broadway star. What should be
simple songs, as they are written as well as should be sung, are
instead aggrandized broadway hits. Yes, Eder has a gorgeous voice,
but here a bit misplaced. I much prefer the casting of Wendy in the
original recording. However, in favor of Eder, the CD is not
replicating the narrative and non-music portions as did the
original CD, so the work may as well be a set of disjointed pieces,
not a flowing piece of arias and spoken scenes. Therefore, her
portrayal of Wendy as a whole is not as crucial had there been a
script to read.
The "bonus track" reinstalled an appreciation for the thematic
material of the second Chichester pslam. I'm left wondering if
there are other restorations to be made from the abandonded "Skin
of Our Teeth" project. Here, I have no qualms with Eder's
interpretation; soft, delicate, flowing.
This is certainly a hallmark in Bernstein recordings. A must for
any Bernstein fan.
A+ for Score, D for Sloppy scholarshipReviewed by Larry Moore, 2005-09-04
This recording is a valuable addition to the music of Leonard
Bernstein, but rather an embarassment in the scholarship of
assembling a lost show. On the plus side, the music is enchanting,
Linda Eder truly stunning in a mix of musical innocence and
sophistication, and it is conducted and played quite well. On the
negative side, Daniel Narducci's soft baritone has neither enough
menace or comedy.
As to reconstructing a lost score, the scholarship is not so hot:
what actually existed from the original show and orchestrations?
Who orchestrated what among the new pieces? As far as that goes,
what of Trude Rittmann and Hershy Kay: who orchestrated what in the
original? How does the size of the orchestra on the recording
compare to the original production orchestration?
On the music not used in the original, what pieces exist in full
and what choices were made in completing others? The recording's
notes are woefully inept.
Why use the lovely, but over-inflated, arrangement of "Dream With
Me" from the 1977 BY BERNSTEIN revue at the Chelsea Theatre instead
of newly orchestrating the extant song sheet? The song, written for
ON THE TOWN, needs to fit the song style of PETER PAN's incidental
music and not turn into a concert number. In the original
production, there were only two Mermaids singing "Neverland." Why a
women's chorus with a bad top soprano?
I've always felt the Bernstein score should be available for
productions of the play, but this "edition" needs some thought
before it's published or made available for performance.
