Who are Stephen Sondheim's favorite composers? — Page 2

Not on who he likes, but my absolute favorite thing I've ever read that Sondheim said about another composer was that "Frank Wildhorn must be the least successful composer on broadway." Regarding his flops, love it.

::looks for link::

http://partners.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000312mag-sondheim.html

Found it! Great article, long, part about Wildhorn toward the end.

In addition to the superb Reiner, there's a bunch of excellent recordings of the Bartok, including those by Bernstein, Chailly, Karajan (the one on DG preferable to the two on EMI), Ormandy, and Ivan Fischer.

I do recommend getting one of that has the stunning Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste as the second piece, which is not true of all those recordings. Though if you already have a recording of the Concerto for Orchestra with I>Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste, it can be fun to have a second recording with something else on it. (I'm one of those people who often collect multiple recordings of the same piece.)

Updated On: 1/5/09 at 03:48 PM

So do I. Of his own generation, I know he likes Bock, Coleman and Kander.

"Despite people comparing him to sondheim, He's made it clear he REALLY doesn't like Jason Robert Brown."

Maybe because Mr. Brown speaks openly about shows his dislikes, is hypercritcal of almost everyone else's work but his own and is a pompous jerk, unlike Mr. Sondheim who is a gracious gentleman.

Updated On: 1/5/09 at 09:19 PM

double post fest

Updated On: 1/5/09 at 09:30 PM

Thanks

Aren't there some colleges that offer courses just on Sondheim? (I might be making this up, I can't remember where I heard it)

But if so, any ideas as to which ones?

*Edited because I misspelled Sondheim!

Updated On: 1/10/09 at 09:55 PM

I hate to say it, but I think the two books that givesmevoice mentions are full of . . . dull, dull, dull academic essays that have little real insight.

Stephen Banfield's Sondheim's Broadway Musicals is very technical about the music but I like it, even though I'm not a musician. If you're not a musician, you may find it boring,

The Meryle Secrest bio is not very good. It has lots of factual errors, inconsistencies, loose ends, chronological confusions and other problems (including some awful writing), but it's still probably worth reading since it's the only biography we have of him.

Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions is a collection of interviews with Sondheim, conducted by Mark Horowitz. It's very technical about music but interesting.

Craig Zadan's Sondheim & Co. was the first book on Sondheim. If you're a serious Sondheim fan, you probably need a copy of one of the later, updated editions. Unfortunately, it's out of print, but not too difficult to get online.

Steve Swayne's How Sondheim Found His Sound is not especially insightful but, apart from a few factual errors, it does present a lot of good information from other sources and some info that can't be found anywhere else.

Two books edited by Otis L. Guernsey, Playwrights, Lyricists, Composers on Theater and Broadway Song & Story, contain transcripts of fascinating talks given by Sondheim. The latter also has a talk between Sondheim and Prince. Both are long out-of-print but can be found, often for a modest price, on abebooks.com and other sites. And both have a slew of excellent interviews with lots of interesting people. I doubt that any theater lover who gets them will be disappointed.

Updated On: 1/7/09 at 02:37 AM

I just saw a Passion era interview where he spoke highly of Ahrens and Flaherty.

BROADWAY SONG & STORY edited by Otis Guernsey is available on Amazon.com. You can get a used copy for very little money. It is a fascinating series of interviews, not just with Sondheim but also about such landmark hits as ON THE TOWN, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and DEATH OF A SALESMAN.

Back to Bartok's CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA for a minute. He composed it in Saranac Lake, NY, in the Adirondacks, where he was convalescing from Tuberculosis-like symptoms, in 1944. It had been commissioned by The Boston Symphony Orchestra. Bartok lived and composed in a tiny hut of a place, which has been restored and is open to the public. Bartok never recovered from his illness and died in 1945. After living in NYC for 31 years, I moved to Saranac Lake in 1996. Bartok's cabin is about the only culture that this town has!

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Updated On: 1/6/09 at 06:13 AM

In his interview with Frank Rich at Oberlin, he said Porgy and Bess was his favorite score. What I found more interesting was that he said he doesn't listen to music with lyrics when he's at home. He listens to foreign symphonies and has borrowed once or twice from them in the past.

Update: The only one of the suggested books they had at my local library was "Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions" and though I haven't gotten through the whole thing yet, so far I find it to be amazing and very helpful, though some of the parts on music are beyond me.

Hey, Sondheim is not above flatulence jokes. Don't forget, he once wrote, "Please... don't fart/There's very little air and this is art".

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