Sondheim: A Musical Tribute

Sondheim: A Musical Tribute was a one-night-only benefit for the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and the National Hemophilia Foundation, performed on the stage of the Shubert Theatre in New York (where Stephen Sondheim's current musical, A Little Night Music, was playing) on March 11, 1973. The idea was to bring together performers who had appeared in Sondheim musicals over the years, in some cases to re-create their renditions of songs they had done in those shows, and in other cases to present little-known work by the composer/lyricist. In practice, that tended to mean there would be a lot of selections from Sondheim's two most recent musicals, Company (1970) and Follies (1971), and there were -- of 29 songs, seven were from Company and nine from Follies. The selection of material did not constitute a "best of" Sondheim, by any means. A primary focus on songs Sondheim had composed as well as written lyrics for, and an absence of some of the stars featured in his early shows, worked against that. So, the only number from West Side Story was "America," featuring Chita Rivera, who introduced it, and without Ethel Merman or Zero Mostel, Gypsy and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum were underrepresented. On the other hand, this was a concert for Sondheim aficionados, as it contained many songs that had been cut from his shows and other rarities. For example, "Take Me to the World" and "I Remember" came from Evening Primrose, a TV musical that had been broadcast just once in 1966; "Silly People" and "Two Fairy Tales," both dropped from A Little Night Music, were the only songs associated with that show to be performed; and the only performer who had not been in a Sondheim show was Jack Cassidy, who had been cast in his early, unproduced musical Saturday Night and here finally got to sing a song from it, "So Many People." Even familiar songs got some unfamiliar additions, with the cut "Pleasant Little Kingdom" serving as the introduction to "Too Many Mornings" from Follies; "Being Alive," the closer from Company, paired with an earlier version of the same song, "Happily Ever After"; and "We're Gonna Be All Right," from Do I Hear a Waltz?, performed with its original, much more biting lyrics, which turned it into a song that could have fit into Company or Follies. The performers were uniformly excellent, though a particular standout was Angela Lansbury, who flew in from London where she was rehearsing a production of Gypsy to sing two of her songs from the Sondheim flop Anyone Can Whistle. And then Sondheim himself turned up at the end to sing the title song from that show. The result is a recording that may be best appreciated by those who already revere Sondheim, rather than neophytes, although it will impress anyone who loves great songwriting and great singers. ~ William Ruhlmann