Those new, clearer musical dialogues are also present because of the truly marvelous new orchestrations by Bruce Coughlin. He's added an entirely new lower split --- he wanted to have a more spacious sound for the much bigger theater, and it comes across even more wonderfully in the recording than it did in the theater. Only adding something like four new players, but that has a crazy domino effect throughout the whole score that does wonders here. It's pretty sensational. (Very mad he didn't get a Tony for this --- Buena Vista was wonderful, but the arrangements were so close to the album that it just confirms to me that the Tony voters truly do not know what orchestration is.)
It's a frustrating show, and I saw it twice at Lincoln Center, and it didn't truly ever completely click in my opinion (although I saw it once from very close, and once from the balcony, and Landau's staging was immeasurably better without that distance --- the stage didn't seem so massive). I think this show works best as an album, and this terrific new album is what the show deserves. It is less gritty certainly --- the level of technical singing required to do Guettel at this level has gotten more prevalent in the last 30 years, and there are more people on Broadway that can do this material while sounding conventionally "pretty." It's six in one hand, half-dozen in the other. I'm also very glad that we have both recordings.
"I feel safe with you, and complete with you / I'm always finding money in the street with you."
-Sheldon Harnick
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