Every now and again, this job makes me discover a gem that I may not have got round to listening to for a while after its release. This particular recording has been a while in the making, and has been much heralded by the musical theatre community. Encores in New York have produced some great staged concert versions of Broadway classics over the years, but sadly few of them have ended up being recorded. So it’s great that Broadway Masterworks recorded the 2015 production of Lerner & Loewe’s Paint Your Wagon, as recordings of this show are few and far between compared to some of their other greats.

Filled with gorgeous standards such as 'They Call the Wind Maria,' 'I Talk to the Trees,' and 'Wand'rin' Star,' Paint Your Wagon is Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's sweepingly ambitious and surprisingly realistic take on freedom, family, and racism in the Gold Rush-happy America of 1853.

The outstanding March 2015 production by Encores! brought the almost-forgotten show back to New York's mainstream stage for the first time since the original Broadway production closed in 1952. And because the original cast album - an early limited capacity monaural LP - had omitted so much of the music, the score was ripe for rediscovery and a brand new recording.

Helping to capture the spirit of the original Broadway production were the full handwritten scores used in 1951 by Franz Allers (Loewe's favourite musical director) and discovered accidentally by Rodgers & Hammerstein musicologist Bruce Pomahac at the bottom of a musty Warner Chappell trunk stored, curiously, at the R&H offices in New York.

Album co-producer and Encores! Music Director Rob Berman leads the thirty member cast and thirty-one piece Encores! Orchestra, in the 2015 stereo cast album that celebrates the scope and riches of Lerner & Loewe's exceptional score. Much of the original dance music orchestrated by Trude Rittmann, created in close collaboration with both Loewe and choreographer Agnes de Mille, appears on this recording for the first time. Also recorded for the first time on this album is the bonus track 'What Do Other Folks Do?' which was dropped from the original production before the show reached New York and whose historical importance is clear: Lerner and Loewe would later recycle the concept for Camelot's 'What Do the Simple Folk Do?'

From the propulsive opening number 'I'm On My Way' through ruminative ballads like 'I Talk to the Trees' and 'Another Autumn' (the show's most under appreciated gem), Loewe deploys all of the skills of a great Broadway composer with brio and confidence, and Lerner's lyrics achieve an easy vernacular language while remaining beautifully crafted. There is a rowdy, rhythmic energy in numbers like 'Whoop-Ti-Ay' and 'There's a Coach Comin' In' that capture the exuberance of the pioneer spirit, and a gentle folksiness in 'I Still See Elisa,' that is classic mid-period Broadway.

In California in May 1853, Ben Rumson strikes gold and establishes a community in his own name. The show follows the progress of the town as hundreds of men come to dig for gold. There are two subplots: the first focuses on the romance between Ben's daughter Jennifer and Julio, a miner forced to live outside the town because he is Mexican; and the second involves the arrival of a Mormon (Jacob) and his two wives (Sarah and Elizabeth), one of whom Ben "buys" in order to free from her abusive marriage. After eighteen months, the gold has run dry and the miners move on. But Jennifer and Julio stay to make a new life, counseled by Rumson who realizes that after violating nature and stealing the earth's riches it's time to settle down and farm the land rather than resume the search for gold. Thus the story depicts the birth, flourishing, death and rebirth of a town over a fixed period of time, an ambitious concept for a Broadway musical.

This is a truly stunning recording, and one that takes you back to the glorious days of the Broadway Musical as it used to be. The sound is superb, the performances outstanding, and very well captured. It’s not a cast full of stars by any means - none of them are even mentioned on the press release - but they are certainly stars on this recording. Alexandra Socha plays Jennifer Rumson, and along with Justin Guarini as Julio Valveras provide the back bone for other performances. The score is full of classics, and I don’t think I’ve heard them performed better than here. My one gripe is this is only a single CD release - I would have loved a full-performance capture of this with more libretto and any abridged music performances.

This is a stand out recording.

10

Ian Gude