Word: sondheims
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INTO THE WOODS Composer-Lyricist Stephen Sondheim's deepest work uses fractured fairy tales for fun and musing on growing...
...sinuous melodies and intricate lyrics of Stephen Sondheim, the leading American composer of musicals, have made for an impressive body of work, including the delicate Pacific Overtures, the sanguinary Sweeney Todd and his new hit, Into the Woods. But Lloyd Webber's sure, if more conventional, sense of musical structure, his adroit handling of the orchestra (unlike Rodgers and Sondheim, Lloyd Webber generally makes his own orchestrations) and his willingness to tackle big subjects bespeak a talent no less sophisticated...
Indeed, except for Sondheim, few American theater composers can match Lloyd Webber's strong classical background. His father, who died in 1982, was Composer William Lloyd Webber, director of the London College of Music, and his mother Jean is a piano teacher. His brother Julian, now 36, became a noted concert cellist. Partly because of his bona fides, however, he feels that his field "inhabits a no-man's-land." Classical reviewers, he observes, do not consider musical shows a part of their world, while drama critics do not always pick up on the subtleties of his music...
...between the two forms is becoming increasingly blurred. Postwar operatic history is a Sargasso Sea of shipwrecked hulks, great lumbering Establishment vessels launched with much fanfare but quickly sent to the bottom under their own weight. Many opera- house successes have come instead from composers outside the academic tradition. Sondheim's Pacific Overtures opened the season at the English National Opera last fall. Sweeney Todd has been performed by the New York City Opera. Last year Evita was produced at the Staats-operette in Dresden...
INTO THE WOODS Stephen Sondheim's best musical yet, gorgeous to look at and haunting to hear. A fractured fairy tale bringing into the same forest Cinderella, Rapunzel and the like and asking what comes after happily-ever- after...