Name: Trouble in Tahiti - Danses Symphoniques de West Side Story par Ulf Schirmer
Brand: Ulf Schirmer
SKU: 4035719003000
Price: 9.9 USD
Availability: OnlineOnly
Rating: 3 (140 reviews)

ALBUM

This recording of two of Leonard Bernstein's finest scores comes from a live 2008 performance by Ulf Schirmer and the Münchner Rundfunk Orchester. It's gratifying when European performers take up pieces that are so idiosyncratically American, but the risk is that they may not capture the idiomatic nuances that really bring the music alive, and that's the case, to some extent, in Schirmer's first recorded foray into American repertoire. He comes very close, but the lack of certain details -- a punchiness in the syncopations, an easy swing -- reveal that this is a style that's not in his blood. Schirmer is most successful in the least jazzy sections, the slower, poignant parts of Trouble in Tahiti, for instance, which are beautifully effective. The beginning of the opera with the vocal jazz trio lacks the necessary irreverent zing; the members of the trio sing with overly precise, correct enunciation rather than the casual slanginess the music calls for, and their intonation and even pitches are sometimes questionable. Schirmer's tempos in the opera tend to be slow, so that the music's built-in momentum gets dissipated. It's a shame, because Rodney Gilfry's emotionally complex and vocally powerful Sam may be the finest on disc. Kim Criswell, who made her career in musical theater, is a natural choice for Dinah, even though some weird pronunciations occasionally make her sound like English is not her first language. She brings oodles of character to the troubled housewife, though; the contrast between her unselfconscious exuberance in "Island Magic" and her pathetic resignation later is especially vivid, and the couple's final spoken exchange is achingly sad. The same strengths and deficiencies are evident in the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. The romantic, more conventionally classical moments come off very well, but Schirmer doesn't quite get the looseness (or the snap) of the jazz-inspired sections. The CD includes an interview with Schirmer in German. The sound is lively and present.
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Trouble in Tahiti - Danses Symphoniques de West Side Story

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1. West Side Story: Symphonic Dances: I. Prologue

2. West Side Story: Symphonic Dances: II. Somewhere

3. West Side Story: Symphonic Dances: III. Scherzo

4. West Side Story: Symphonic Dances: IV. Mambo

5. West Side Story: Symphonic Dances: V. Cha-cha

6. West Side Story: Symphonic Dances: VI. Meeting Scene

7. West Side Story: Symphonic Dances: VII. Cool

8. West Side Story: Symphonic Dances: VIII. Fugue

9. West Side Story: Symphonic Dances: IX. Rumble

10. West Side Story: Symphonic Dances: X. Finale

11. Trouble in Tahiti: Prelude: Mornin' Sun (Trio)

12. Trouble in Tahiti: Scene 1: How could you say (Sam, Dinah, Trio)

13. Trouble in Tahiti: Scene 2: Yes? Oh Mister Partridge! (Sam, Trio)

14. Trouble in Tahiti: Scene 3: I was standing in a garden (Dinah) - Scene 2a: Miss Brown? (Sam) - Scene 3a: Then the desire took hold inside me (Dinah)

15. Trouble in Tahiti: Scene 4: Well, of all people (Sam, Dinah)

16. Trouble in Tahiti: Interlude: Lovely day! (Trio)

17. Trouble in Tahiti: Scene 5: There's a law (Sam)

18. Trouble in Tahiti: Scene 6: What a movie (Dinah, Trio)

19. Trouble in Tahiti: Scene 6a: There's a law (Sam) - Scene 7: Evening Shadows (Sam, Dinah, Trio)

20. Elgin Heuerding in conversation with Ulf Schirmer

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