Customer Reviews

Masterpiece: Live Great Hall of People

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I saw the TV Special and the CD is missing some of the better pieces of music. Disppointing. I thought the CD would contain all of the music from the TV special and purchased it before its release. Had i known that songs like "The Heart is Slow to Learn" would not be included, I would have saved my money - the recorded songs are pretty much the same pieces that have been recorded before.

Let's begin with a little detail on the concert first. This is the highlight recording of "Masterpiece: The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber live in Beijing" which took place at the Great Hall of the People in September 2001. There are 4 main singers here: Elaine Paige, Tony Vincent, Kris Philips (Fei Xiang) and Sandy Lam. Besides from the 4 main singers, there are also an ensemble cast of 12-16 people which I believe are from Australia.

The whole concert is almost 3 hours in length with over 30 songs from almost all the works by Andrew Lloyd Webber including the latest show by Webber back then which was "The Beautiful Game". Missing only Starlight Express and By Jeeves. Here comes the bad part, only 13 were chosen to be on the CD and Miss Sandy Lam's song isn't even on the recording!!! There are some other truly wonderful performance that were left off the recording. For example, Tony Vincent's "And the Money Kept Rolling", the ensemble's "Let Us Love in Peace" and Miss Paige's "The Heart Is Slow to Learn", just to name a few

Still, there are some really nice performance captured in the CD. Elaine's "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" and "As If We Never Said Goodbye" are quite good but I have heard better versions out there. Tony Vincent's "Jesus Christ Superstar" is really awesome. That shouldn't be a big surprise since he was Judas in the Broadway Revival of JCS. Another of my favourite is Helen Walsh with her take on "Take That Look off Your Face". That was quite a performance. The other outstanding one is Lisa Crosato with her rendition of "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again". Then there's a great treat when both of them sang a duet together in "Pie Jesu". It was so beautiful. Thank goodness they didn't leave this one out.

Besides from the audio part, there are also sample clips from the concert: Kris Philip's "The Music of the Night" and Sandy Lam's "I Don't Know How to Love Him". Amazon said that it comes in a form of a bonus DVD. Mine's more of an enhanced-CD, if you pop the CD into the computer, then the bonus clips will play. That's quite a nice treat. But wouldn't it be better to just buy the DVD?

So, to sum all of that up, I'd recommend you to go and get the DVD if you're interested in the concert. I didn't hate this recording or anything but just wish that it would be more complete.

This is a very poor concert. There are only two actually good women singers, the older woman who sings "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" and the young woman who sings "Wishing you were Somehow Here again" and the duet of "All I ask of you" is actually VERY good, I would definitly listen to her more. Again, there are only one or two half decent male singers "Sunset boulavard" for instance. The singers that are also in the chorus who have solos are very bad, the songs "Jesus Christ Superstar" "The Music of the Night" "And the money kept rolling in" "I don't know how to love him" "Memory" are all just plain bad. If you are really interested, I sudgest trying to find it in your library, it is just not worth paying ANYTHING to buy it.