Truly one of the greatest and possibly the most neglected classic creations of the Golden Age of Musical Theatre. Though it would take a full, two-CD set (which the world has needed for a long time) to hear the sung-through score and experience the sweep of LaTouche's libretto, this sampling of highlights should intrique the musical theatre fan enough to make them hope for a revial. Aside from the standard "Lazy Afternoon" sung by a young Kaye Ballard the relatively unknown ballad "Windflowers" will leave one breathless. A must for any serious musical theatre collection.
July 18, 2007I had the pleasure of performing in the chorus of this wonderful show in the summer of '78 in a youth theatre program in Port Washington, LI, NY. This was only my third musical ever, having just played in school productions of "Carnival" and "Gypsy" as a green sophomore in high school. Somehow, our director contacted Jerome Moross to tell him of our production and he traveled to speak with us during one of our final dress rehearsals. What a thrill for a bunch of kids (albeit an unusually talented one - we had to be to pull this challenging show off!) to get to meet the actual composer of the show we were presenting! It made a tremendous impression on me and further fanned the theatrical flame that has carried me through 30 years of fun, friendships, and fulfillment in the theatre. The quality and editing of this recording is not what is should be -- but it exists, and that's reason enough to add this to your collection.
May 27, 2007Thought I liked it until I read Hulsey's review. Now it all falls into place. The corny spoken couplets linking the tunes. It IS incomplete, and sewn together like Frankenstein's monster. But since this is all that's available (that I know of), I would like to say that the music is a treasure, the tunes are wonderful (if the ragtime numbers were a precursor to sondheim's "follies," I prefer "Golden Apple"), the lyrics are only clever in a few places, most of the time they are either dreary or hard to sing. Until a complete studio recording is made, I recommend this. The singing is adequate. I would like to know what Hulsey knows, about the authors' intended ending, the rest of the score, etc.
February 10, 2007 |  | Not the greatest recording, but the only one available |  |
Jerome Moross and John Latouche's "The Golden Apple" is two hours of wall-to-wall music: Like Bernstein's "Candide," it's an American opera in a distinctively Broadway idiom (though unlike "Candide," it seldom calls attention to the fact). Moross's score in particular is the sort of boisterous, genre-bending work that Flaherty's work in "Ragtime" should have been: It puts popular culture from the first half of the twentieth century into a blender, adds distinctive, unpredictable modernist harmonics, and serves with wit and verve.
Which makes the OCR of "Golden Apple" all the more unfortunate. Over half the score has been cut, entire scenes are missing, the segments that remain are linked with clunky rhyming narration, and the ending reflects the hokey "Broadway" ending rather than the finale Moross and Latouche originally wrote -- and preferred.
A few pieces are performed in their entirety, or something near to it: The bluesy "Lazy Afternoon" and the touching ballad "Windflowers" are the show's best-known songs, and the Act II vaudeville numbers -- often cited as a precursor to Sondheim's "Follies" -- are well represented. For the most part, however, the cuts show: This recording makes the show seem choppy and underdeveloped, with promising musical motifs that go nowhere. Sound quality, though generally acceptable, reflects the limits of mid-'50s mono technology; ensemble numbers tend to be overmodulated with garbled lyrics. (Worse yet, the CD booklet lacks a printed libretto.)
Until some enterprising soul undertakes a 2-disc recording of the entire "Golden Apple" score, this OCR will remain the only one available.
February 28, 2006 | | DESERVES A BROADWAY REVIVAL | |
Here it is about 52 years after I played first trumpet in this show which started off Broadway then went into the Alvin Theater and the on to a limited run in Washington DC for about 10 days and then.......closed. It was and is a great show and of course the limited music on the CD does not do the show full justice. The music is brilliant and the orchestrations by Hershey Kaye is outstanding. We did the album in 2 seperate recording sessions and I remember that we recorded the overture which was very challenging last during the session. It was a perfect take the first time we played it. I still enjoy the music every time I listen to it and I only hope that some young producer gets his hands on the show and says, "this is a diamond worth doing again"..
January 15, 2006More reviews at Amazon.com ...
(17 reviews)