In a career that s veered from 70s pop chanteuse to Broadway star and neo-operatic diva, Sarah Brightman has brought a critics-be-damned sense of dramatic scale to nearly every project she s tackled. As the title suggests, the tracks here are largely culled from her Songs That Got Away and Surrender song anthologies, although they do include four previously unreleased outtakes from those collections. Her 1998 recording of the title song from ex-husband Andrew Lloyd Webber s Whistle Down the Wind succeeds by emphasizing its melodic grace with a deft, airy touch, while the remainder rescue worthy songs from obscure or failed musicals. From Lerner and Lane s 1959 Carmelina comes the lovely One More Walk Around the Garden. Stephen Sondheim s youthful 1954 debut, Saturday Night, yields a sprightly take on What More Do I Need, while an operatic reading of In the Mandarin s Orchid Garden, from the Gershwins unproduced 1929 East Is West, is also included. If the selection leans a little too heavily on the Lloyd Webber connection elsewhere (including Italian versions of Guardami (With One Look) from Sunset Boulevard and Piano (Memory) from Cats delivered in her patently restraint-free soprano), they re only reminders that shrewdness has hardly been the least of Brightman s talents.
More info:
http://www.amazon.com/Scriabin-Piano-Sonatas-Alexander/dp/B0000041LGY
Tracklist:
1. Whistle down the wind
2. Away from you
3. Guardami (with one look-italian version)
4. Think of me (the phantom of the opera)
5. One more walk around the garden
6. Surrender
7. If i ever fall in love
8. Half a moment
9. Piano (memory-italian version)
10. What more do i need
11. There is more to love
12. The last man in my life
13. In the mandarin orchid garden
14. Nothing like you ve ever known
15. Chi il bel sogno di doretta