Is there a person on this planet who has not seen The Sound of Music? Dragged out for a Christmas mawkish treat, the musical tell the story of Maria Rainer a novice nun sent to the home of the aristocratic Captain Georg von Trapp, an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy.

Maria discovers that the Trapp children are sporting uniforms and march in an orderly fashion, their father having no other notion of how to deal with then since their mother’s death. Although he is betrothed to another, both the Captain and Maria realise they have feelings for each other after dancing at a ball.

Maria returns to the abbey, but the abbess realises that she is just hiding from her feelings and sends her back. In the meantime Max, an impresario, wants the family to perform on stage. Against a background of increasing Nazi intrusion into their country and lives, the family escape the performance and flee to freedom across the mountains.

The original stage musical was based on a German film Die Trapp-Familie and Maria's autobiography, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. The original plan was to have a fairly straight play interspersed with songs which the family actually sang. It was also decided to change a fair amount of historical fact. For instance the family didn’t climb every mountain to escape, but rather took a train, which isn’t as dramatic.

The eventual stage show became a full blown musical, with music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. The popularity of the stage show, and the subsequent film, meant that several of the songs became ingrained in the collective consciousness of the west.

The show has been in constant production since its first outing in 1959, so it is not unusual to be listening to another version for the twenty tens. This time the production was for a special live performance for NBC.

Central to the story, Maria is played by GRAMMY winner, Carrie Underwood. Although not a trained actress, which is probably why she came in for some stick for her performance, the same cannot be said of her singing. Actually the criticism was a tad unfair as it focused on the fact that she was not Julie Andrews, well neither was Mary Martin who stared in the original production. Her vocal performance is flawless, even for someone not called Julie.

This full cast recording came out before the live show, so is not a recording of that event and it probably benefits from this. Underwood is abetted by Stephen Moyer (Captain Von Trapp), Audra McDonald (Mother Abbess), Laura Benanti (Elsa) and Christian Borle (Max).

The album contains twenty two tracks, a much more expanded number than that which appeared in the film and more properly corresponds to the stage musical. The arrangements are pretty standard and so you’ll not find any surprises on their presentation. Underwood’s voice has an edge to it which makes it stand out from her fellow performers.

The recording comes with a rather nice digital booklet which covers the history of the show, a list of songs and who is singing as well as the lyrics.

Overall this was not a bad production of the show and would interest Underwood’s fans as well as those not psychotically attached to the film version.

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Charles Packer