The Essential Songs of Andrew Lloyd Webber [Soundtrack, Import]

Essential Songs of Andrew Lloyd Webber (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 22, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Soundtrack, Import
• Label: Metro Music
• ASIN: B00005Y47E
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #37,935 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #3 in Music > Indie Music > Soundtracks > Musicals
  • #9 in Music > Indie Music > Pop > Instrumental Pop & Lounge
  • #77 in Music > Pop > Easy Listening > Lounge

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Any Dream Will Do

2. Close Every Door

3. Heaven On Their Minds

4. Everything's Alright

5. Gethsemane

6. I Don't Know How To Love Him

7. Jesus Christ Superstar

8. Could We Start Again Please?

9. Don't Cry For Me Argentina

10. Another Suitcase In Another Hall

See all 20 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Only You

2. Starlight Express

3. There's Me

4. Pie Jesu

5. Angel Of Music

6. Masquerade

7. Wishing Somehow You Were Here Again

8. All I Ask Of You

9. The Phantom Of The Opera

10. Music Of The Night

See all 20 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

Full title, 'Essential Songs Of Andrew Lloyd Webber'. UK budget-price compilation. 40 superlative performances featuring songs from every one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's hit musicals. Guest artists include John Barrymore, Issy Van Randwyck, Dave Willetts, Maria Friedman, Kim Criswell, Graham Bickley and the National Symphony Orchestra. Housed in a slipcase. 2002.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Some great performances, some not so great..., April 17, 2005

By 

Melanie A. Stein (NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Essential Songs of Andrew Lloyd Webber (Audio CD)

This CD is actually pretty good, considering you get 40 songs for less than $16. Let's evaluate the pros and cons.

Pros:

Two classic songs that are performed excellently are Phantom of the Opera and I Don't Know How to Love Him.

Of course you want to compare Phantom to the classic Michael Crawford/Sarah Brightman version. Well, guess what? This version is BETTER, in my opinion. The woman has a deeper voice than Brightman, and her singing style is just awesome. The ending of this version is different, but in a good way.

And of course, the standard for I Don't Know How to Love Him is Yvonne's version. This version is different, but it grew on me quickly. This version has a country feel to it, almost. Somehow it works and sounds great.

There are a lot of great performances in this collection. My favorites include: Heaven on Their Minds, Everything's Alright, Could We Start Again Please, Another Suitcase in Another Hall, Buenos Aires, Rainbow High, Only You, Starlight Express, Angel of Music, Masquerade, All I Ask of You, Half a Moment, and Whistle Down the Wind. I think they're all great versions of their more famous counterparts.

Cons:

First of all, there are some technical problems that are kind of disappointing. A few of the songs have a very echoe-y sound. Any Dream Will Do, Another Suitcase in Another Hall, Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again, and There's Me are the songs that come to mind that are the worst in this regard. It isn't really bad, just enough to be slightly annoying, more so when the volume is turned way up on your CD player.

A few songs are worthy of skipping over when listening to this collection. In my opinion, Superstar, Sunset Boulevard, and Gethsemane are the biggest disappointments.

Superstar just doesn't cut it for me. The singer really overdoes it, making it overstylized... really makes you yearn for Murray Head. I can't stand listening to it. Just my opinion.

Sunset Boulevard is one of my very favorite musicals, so I was really hoping that the singer would do justice to its title song. Unfortunately I don't think he did. You can't help but compare it to Alan Campbell's fantastic version. This guy has a very choppy way of singing, when I'm used to it being sung so smoothly. Maybe it will grow on me. However, that last note is much stronger than Alan Campbell's. Too bad it doesn't make up for the rest of the song.

Finally, Gethsemane. The inevitable fact is that no one can sing this song like Michael Ball. This guy tries, he really does. But for me, he doesn't have the right voice or the right style. So please listen to Michael Ball's performance of Gethsemane if you want to know how breathtaking of a song it can be. It's on the Royal Albert Hall DVD, and I'm sure he's got it on one of his CDs.

Anyway, overall, this is a good CD if you like quantity over quality. Don't buy it for the classics, as you'll probably end up disappointed with many of them. Buy it for the lesser known songs. You probably won't like every song, especially if you're a big ALW fan, but for the price, it's worth it.

If you want classic versions of classic ALW songs, you might prefer something like "The Very Best of Andrew Lloyd Webber: The Broadway Collection".

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Okay, but kind of disappointing, April 16, 2006

By 

bibliophilegirl "JM" (Somewhere) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Essential Songs of Andrew Lloyd Webber (Audio CD)

This isn't a bad recording, but the tracks are not the actual performances off of any cast recording of any of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musicals. The reditions of the songs on the disc are of varying quality. Some are pretty good. Some are borderline awful.
It is a good collection for inexpensively getting a lot of Andrew Lloyd Webber's most popular songs in one place and having them there to be able to listen to get the idea of what a certain song sounds like and is about. It isn't the collection of definitive recordings for certain roles. In fact in a couple examples, I wonder if the performer fully understood the context of the song he or she was singing &/or what it was about. Overall, the album is good, for the most part, if not excellent.

However, the liner notes for "The Essential Songs of Andrew Lloyd Webber" is another matter. I don't mean to be unkind, but the author of the comments on the different tracks (one Rexton S. Bunnett) is blatantly WRONG in multiple instances. I don't mean just in nit-picky details, but in major plot details/context of songs, like the fact that Bunnett identifies "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" as being sung by "our heroine" (who he does not even identify by name as Christine Daae) as she thinks about her lover, not as being sung about Christine's dead father. He also says that the Phantom has found his perfect love and "Angel of Music" in Christine... because HE is the Angel of Music who Christine believes has been sent to her by her dead father, and because although the Phantom is obsessed with Christine, that relationship is far from "loving" (even if Christine shows him compassion. I feel like these (and a couple other mistakes) are major plot points to get wrong. A good amount of the commentary reads as if Bunnett might have written it at the last minute, fudging his way through entries on musicals of which he had little knowledge; like what an essay I might write on a book I never read for my college class but had quickly looked up on Cliff's Notes would sound like. In terms of sheer editing, there are spelling mistakes, run-on sentences and spacing errors ("Any DreamWill Do")in the liner notes. Where was the copy editor?
And the most frightening fact of all, under Bunnett's credentials, it says "Harper Collins has just published his revision and updating of the Collins Book of the Musical."
I am being very critical, but I think that for a widely-released CD it is reasonable to expect the liner notes to be at a professional level, as they were most likely supposed to be.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not quite what I expected..., April 22, 2005

By 

Pamela S. Romito (Orlando, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Essential Songs of Andrew Lloyd Webber (Audio CD)

I was looking for a CD of the original performances and this CD doesn't have them. I suppose it was my fault for not looking closer, but the songs just weren't the same. Personally, I was not impressed. If you don't care that they aren't the originals then it is nice to listen to.