Best recording of the GYPSY overture.

[binau]

Posted: 8/21/10 at 8:46pm

Is it the LuPone!GYPSY?

[Bettyboy72]

Posted: 8/21/10 at 9:01pm

I think the Peters GYPSY is the best overture with Marvin Laird conducting. It was thrilling.

[elphabelle07]

Posted: 8/21/10 at 9:05pm

I am aware that this is going to make me sound completely ridiculous, but the overture to the 2008 revival actually makes me emotional. I adore it!

[slmlbl]

Posted: 8/21/10 at 9:12pm

my fave overture ever.

my vote goes to peters or lupones. for sure.

[theeatah]

Posted: 8/21/10 at 10:13pm

For me, it comes down to the trumpet solo during the "burlesque" portion. And the OBC has yet to be beat in that department.

However, I dislike the mixing on the OBC - one channel is clear, the other sounds distant and muddy to my ears. So, I actually listen to the 2008 Revival overture (the second best trumpet solo) the most.

I've heard how awful Kay Medford was on the London Studio Cast, but was the music well rendered? I've heard that the "All I Need Is The Girl" is the best version.

[musicman_bwayfan]

Posted: 8/21/10 at 10:57pm

Hands down, the best one by far is from the Bernadette Peters recording with Chris Jaudes - one of the top three best (and first call) lead trumpet players in NYC. He also teaches jazz trumpet at Julliard - if I'm not mistaken. Chris just finished playing 2nd trumpet on Hair.

The 2008 LuPone revival recording is also good with John Chudoba playing lead. However, knowing his capabilities, I was not nearly as pleased with the solo in the overture - in the recording or live...they sounded really similar and almost as if he was more or less playing the same thing every night which is taking the easy way out. John is now playing lead on West Side Story.

While the solo in the OBC recording is noteworthy and definitely memorable/revolutionary, I didn't care for the mix with the solo in the background...

All we now need is Dave Trigg and Bud Burridge to play Gypsy and then all of the #1 Broadway trumpet players will have recorded the Gypsy overture.

[bk]

Posted: 8/22/10 at 12:13am

If you're listening to the Thomas Z. remix of Gypsy's overture, then you aren't hearing the overture of Gypsy as it was mixed by Mr. Lieberson. That was the original CD release of Gypsy off the album masters and nothing can touch that overture - ever. However they are played on subsequent recordings, the recordings themselves are not in the class of Lieberson - although most young people like what they first heard or the version they saw. That's fairly typical. I've seen and heard 'em all - and the OBC (not the remix) will, IMO, never be topped.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 8/22/10 at 10:37pm

I have to say that whenever I've heard the Boston Pops play the GYPSY overture, it blasts the roof off of Symphony Hall. Please remember, it's a 100 piece orchestra and Maestro Lockhart is an admitted " musical theater geek".

(Ooops--Just realized you were talking about "recordings". So sorry!)

Updated On: 8/22/10 at 10:37 PM

[ClapYo'Hands]

Posted: 8/24/10 at 6:39pm

Gotta be the OBC.

As much as a love the OLC (and Angela Lansbury) the orchestra is so awful on that recording! They make so many mistakes in the overture alone!

[Dollypop]

Posted: 8/24/10 at 7:13pm

I understand that two sections of the Lansbury recording were re-done. The overture was re-recorded and some of "Rose's Tuen" was cleaned up. (In the recording I have, which was purchased when the show was running there, Lansbury exhales deeply at the end of "Rose's Turn"--almost as though she's collapsing.)

All this means is that there are two versions of the Lansbury recording floating around out there.

[alterego]

Posted: 8/24/10 at 9:03pm

Yes Dollypop there are two versions. I believe some tracks were re-recorded before the NY season in 1974. Have a listen to the version you have. Does Lansbury "go up"* at the end of Some People? If so you have the first release of the London Cast.

* On the phrase "...but not Rose".
Updated On: 8/24/10 at 09:03 PM

[Pippin]

Posted: 8/24/10 at 9:31pm

The Sam Mendes version is far superior to the Lupone Version. I can feel the energy from The Mendes version. Lupone's version is a little slower, and not as exciting as Mendes'.

[Horton]

Posted: 8/24/10 at 10:03pm

@musicman_bwayfan, I believe the lead trumpet player on the revival of Gypsy was Tony Kadleck.

I could be wrong, but I thought Tony played lead, and then John was a replacement.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 8/25/10 at 12:53am

I'm closing my eyes now.

I'm six years old and already a big musical theater fan. My parents decided to take me to see a real Broadway show when we were in New York (having seen the opening night of Camelot at the world premiere in Toronto just weeks before.) My folks, who were professional show folks were thrilled I was taking interest in the stage.

So we saw "Gypsy."

I can still hear the overture. It changed, well, probably shaped my entire life. (My parents used to say I called Merman "the loud lady.")

There is no possible way that anything can top the original cast recording for me. This was the original musicians, playing the music exactly as they did every night at the Broadway Theater. And damn, were they good.

Imagine what opening night must have been like. Seventeen hundred people hearing those song, those amazing melodis for the very first time. Nobody had ever heard "Everything's Coming Up Roses" before. It was totally fresh and new. What must that have been like?

I wonder which song people hummed on the way out. Probably "Everything's Coming Up Roses" or maybe "Funny."

I know what I remembered as we left. What would you have remembered

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 8/25/10 at 1:09am

I'm assuming that by "Funny" you mean "Small World", correct?

[allofmylife]

Posted: 8/25/10 at 1:38am

Of course. I'm old and tired.

[ClapYo'Hands]

Posted: 8/25/10 at 8:13am

alterego, I thought she went down in the Original London, and then up when it transferred to Broadway?

In mine, she stays down, and mine was before she went to Broadway.

Also, if you watch the video of her on Youtube (which was filmed on Broadway), she goes up.

[Smaxie]

Posted: 8/25/10 at 8:25am

Next best to the indispensable original, I've always liked Eric Stern's crisp conducting of the Overture on the Tyne Daly recording. Great trumpet solo, as well.

[ClapYo'Hands]

Posted: 8/25/10 at 9:11am

Shame about the rest of it...

[millie_dillmount]

Posted: 8/25/10 at 9:34am

Dollypop: I live in Boston and am a huge Boston Pops/Keith Lockhart fan, but don't remember them playing the Gypsy overture. Was this in a recent season?

I really enjoy the overture from the Bernadette Peters revival.

[monestere]

Posted: 8/25/10 at 9:34pm

Although they never recorded it, Arthur Fiedler and John Williams conducted the Gypsy Overture in concerts at least once each in the 1960s & 1980s, but not in Boston. The version used in the majority of instances by symphony orchestras is not the Sid Ramin original for about 30 players used on cast recordings but Frank Perkins' expanded version of Ramin's orchestration used in the 1962 film version which calls for 70 players. Jule Styne himself conducts this version on the film soundtrack but although the overture was recorded in its entirety a severely edited version of the performance is used on the film's credits and even on the soundtrack album it is cut to about 3 minutes. The complete 5 and a half minute film overture was recorded only one more time, on a RCA & TER CD devoted to Jule Styne Overtures. Although it pales when compared to Styne's own performance with the incomparable Warner Bros Orchestra it is still, in my opinion, the biggest and brassiest performance of the Gypsy Overture and it is truly awesome hearing a large symphony orchestra playing it. Here is a link to a mp3 file of that performance by the National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jack Everly.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/ma8wro

[zamedy]

Posted: 8/2/11 at 10:06pm

In my opinion, this is THE BEST overture ever written. There are so many parts about it to love.. especially that trumpet solo! And in my opinion, nothing beats the OBCR. It gives me chills every time. Yes.. what it must have been to be in that audience on May 21, 1959 hearing it for the very first time. Ever. Electrifying.

[best12bars]

Posted: 8/3/11 at 12:19am

OBCR

Followed by the Tyne Daly revival.

[Gypsy9]

Posted: 8/3/11 at 5:44am

Being such a GYPSY fanatic, like Zamedy, I always love finding out about new facts connected with the show. First, I prefer the overture on the OBCR to all the others. But now I learned from bk that there are two mixes for this overture. I have an older CD of the OBC as well as the newest, 50th anniversary CD which must have been mixed differently, so I will compare the two.

I also like the Eric Stern conducted overture for the Tyne Daly production which I must have seen ten times. Eric Stern is one of the best pit conductors on Broadway. (His conducting of the Lincoln Center 1990's CAROUSEL is masterful). What has he conducted lately?

The Jack Everly conducted CD of most of Jule Styne's overtures is quite wonderful, with occasional slight variations from overtures on the OBCR's. Incidentally, that CD was utilized at Jule Styne's memorial at the Majestic in the mid 1990's.

I agree with others that the orchestra on the Angela Lansbury cast recording is quite bad. I wonder how it made it into release.

I liked the Patti LuPone production of GYPSY, but almost never play the cast recording. I always come back to the OBCR.