BaL 4.07.15 - Rodgers: Carousel

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

0930
Edward Seckerson compares available versions of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel and makes a personal recommendation.

After 1943, Rogers and Hammerstein had a problem. How could they possibly follow the phenomenal Broadway success of Oklahoma!? Two years later, the story of fairground barker Billy Bigelow and millworker Julie Jordan in 19th-century Maine was their answer. Carousel, with its themes of despair, illegitimacy, childhood misery and the redemptive power of love, prompted Stephen Sondheim to declare 'whilst Oklahoma! is about a picnic, Carousel is about life.'

Carousel's string of unforgettable numbers ("June is Bustin' Out All Over", "If I Loved You", "When the Children are Asleep" and "You'll Never Walk Alone") struck a chord with wartime audiences. Fifty years on, it can be seen as one of the great stage works of the 20th century.



Available versions:

Munsel, Merrill, Henderson, Irving

Origonal Broadway cast

Joanna Riding Michael Hayden Katrina Murphy Clive Rowe Meg Johnson

Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones, Cameron Mitchell, Barbara Ruick, Claramae Turner, Newman

Sarah Brightman Maureen Forrester David Rendall

Robin Guthrie

[pastoralguy]

Superb! Carousel is a lovely show that fully deserves a BAL slot. One of my happiest memory's is playing Carousel in the pit for six weeks. Very affectionate music.

[cloughie]

Great music or more R3 dumbing down?

[MrGongGong]

Very affectionate music.

Affectionate music?

Can music be 'affectionate'?

[Nick Armstrong]

Carousel is a lovely show that fully deserves a BAL slot.

Really?

And there seems to be only one available version...

(Thinks: the list must be a Work in Progress).

Anyway made grumpy by the R3 "quiz" currently playing a "pop song" (a new slot for Fridays...), I find "Carousel" on BAL a disappointment. Perhaps I'll be proved wrong.

[doversoul1]

Does a work being a classic musical make its music classical music? (I don’t think it makes it Jazz) Are we to expect The Sound of Music next?

I have nothing against musicals but when I think how rarely, if at all, early vocal works other than Bach, Handel and occasional Monteverdi is the subject of BaL, programming like this really bothers me. Famous/classic musicals have many other places to be heard and talked about, whereas chant, motets, polyphony or madrigals and all those great early choir works only have Radio3.

[Stanfordian]

Affectionate music?

Can music be 'affectionate'?

Of course music can have an affectionate feel. Unless you are thinking that the CD containing the music might actually kiss you and hold your hand tenderly.

[Stanfordian]

Hiya Doversoul,

The programme BAL seem to be broadening its scope. I love the musical Carousel but if it is included in BAL then why not as you say The Sound of Music. Then maybe the musicals Mamma Mia!, The Rocky Horror Picture Show or The Who's Tommy; there seems little difference to me.

[Nick Armstrong]

Indeed. And aren't they riding roughshod over their own silly season "branding"? The wretched

"Classical Voice season - exploring the depth and power of classical singing"

at least makes it clear what it's about.

And "Carousel" ain't it.

[Conchis]

Not sure how I feel about Carousel being featured but I will say this....

'Soliloquy': rules!:)

[Nick Armstrong]

Not sure what that means but I'm sure it's just my ignorance.

[french frank]

Whether it 'deserves' to be there, whether it is 'dumbing down', it is unquestionably populism. It fits the old Radio 3 mantra of 'reaching out to the general public' - and it's hard to see how that achieves anything except push 'traditional' classical music back into a smaller and smaller corner.

That said, BAL is a treatment that Carousel wouldn't get on Radio 2 which is so 'dumb' it gets 15 million listeners per week. Not a lot to be proud of, in my opinion, but there you are.

[MrGongGong]

Of course music can have an affectionate feel. Unless you are thinking that the CD containing the music might actually kiss you and hold your hand tenderly.

'Of course' ???

Hummm I'm not sure about that assumption

(but, as I said elsewhere, i'm just back from a conference about electroacoustic music with much talk about how music acquires meaning etc)

[Conchis]

Whether it 'deserves' to be there, whether it is 'dumbing down', it is unquestionably populism. It fits the old Radio 3 mantra of 'reaching out to the general public' - and it's hard to see how that achieves anything except push 'traditional' classical music back into a smaller and smaller corner.

That said, BAL is a treatment that Carousel wouldn't get on Radio 2 which is so 'dumb' it gets 15 million listeners per week. Not a lot to be proud of, in my opinion, but there you are.

In the seventies, the Beatles were featured in the Penguin Record Guide. i couldn't understand why: they've long since been dropped from it.

I can see the thinking behind the BAL Caroousel decision. The 'natural' home of R & H would have been Radio 2; but R2's demographic has shifted - it's now listened to mainly by people in their mid-thirties to late-fifties, whose reference points are very much post-1965. R&H are off their radar but would almost certainly be on the (peripheral) radar of a majority of Radio 4 listeners.

[Richard Tarleton]

A quick glance at Amazon suggests it doesn't much matter which version you choose

The cover of this version looks like sets of false teeth



Though interestingly it does have a couple of heavyweight "classical" voices on it (Maureen Forrester, Samuel Ramey). And Sarah Brightman.....