REVIEW: Fiddler On The Roof, Broadway Cast Recording 2016 ✭✭✭✭✭

Fiddler On The Roof

Broadway Cast 2016

Broadway Records

Release Date 18th March 2016

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I’m sure I can’t be the only person who grew up in a house where the original Broadway cast album (vinyl) of Fiddler On The Roof with Zero Mostel, sat along-side My Fair Lady and Oklahoma! and in my case Brigadoon. Those vinyl cast albums formed my first introduction to musical theatre. Sitting there in the K-Tel select-o-matic record rack, the Fiddler On the Roof album with the bright orange Chagall like illustration on its cover was enough to draw in any inquisitive child. It beaconed to be played.

I enjoyed the music of Fiddler, but it was only in my late teens that I realised just how incredible the music on this album was. It would be years again before I actually saw a production, albeit one that I was actually taking part in.

Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick and Joseph Stein took the works of Sholem Alechem and created a world set in Imperial Russia where family and tradition were all. Life is a constant challenge for Tevye the milkman. He talks to God, is a part of his community and loves his wife and daughters to a point where he will break with tradition to ensure their happiness.

Late last year, Bartlett Sher and the creative team that bought South Pacific and The King And I back to Broadway bought a new production of Fiddler On The Roof back to the great white way.

This new production of Fiddler stars 5 time Tony Award nominee Danny Burstein as Tevye with Jessica Hecht as Golde.

Bustein sounds like a wonderous Tevye. His rich baritone renderings of the classic If I Were A Rich Man is fresh and alive. Do You Love Me? with Golde is funny and knowing, this is a couple who know each other well and that comes across in the performance of the song. Fiddler On the Roof is a show which relies on the humour and drama that surrounds the village of Anatevka. Numbers such as The Rumour, and To Life sound wonderful, each is painted vividly and the recording conjurs the scenes up in your imagination with ease. My favourite moments in Fiddler are those with Tevye and his daughters played in the recording by Alexandra Silber, Samantha Massell, Melanie Moore, Jeny Rose Baker and Hayley Feinstein). Matchmaker, Far From The Home I Love and the Chavaleh ballet sequence are beautifully captured in this recording.

Musical Director Ted Sperling propels his orchestra of 22 (YES 22!) and cast through Bock's score never allowing it to drag. For as Fiddler is all about life so is this cast recording.

With this recording listeners also get two bonus tracks. The first is a Variations and Cadenza of Excerts from the show by John Williams featuring Itzhak Perlman. The second is the disguarded song Dear Sweet Sewing Machine sung by Motel.

Whilst I am a lover of classic Broadway recordings, there’s no doubt that modern recording techniques captures a certain zing when it comes to Broadway cast recordings. Get a good cast, a good playback system and the characters leap out at you. When you are half way around the world it’s the next best thing to being there, and for Broadway it’s the perfect invitation for listeners to come and buy a ticket.

I doubt this recording of Fiddler will be leaving my play list any time soon. It remains of the greatest musical theatre scores ever written.

BOOK TICKETS TO FIDDLER ON THE ROOF ON BROADWAY

https://youtu.be/kgt0tl3oExM