Month: September 2020

Kristina från Duvemåla (1996 Swedish Cast Recording)

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Buckle your seatbelts, everyone. This is one long, emotional roller-coaster of a musical, giving Schonburg’s Les Mis and Miss Saigon a run for it (sadness) money. I’m talking about Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus’ (of ABBA fame) epic Swedish musical Kristina från Duvemåla. Kristina’s entire score apparently clocks in at around 4 hours, with it’s 1996 Swedish Cast Recording, reviewed here, running just under 3 hours. The melodies are rich, the orchestrations are unique, gorgeous, and soaring. Andersson’s musical about hope, change, life, and death always fills my heart with love and sadness.

It’s been 15 years now since its incarnation, and Kristina has never seen the same level of success as Andersons’ hits Mamma Mia or Chess, but this album is absolutely mandatory for all theatre enthusiasts. And I’ll explain why:

I first heard this musical back in 2001 when I was also introduced to the, not quite as long, Complete Danish Cast Recording of Chess. It was the first time I had heard Chess in its entirety, and I was eager to hear another Andersson/Ulvaeus epic musical. The Swedish duo were spiking in popularity here in the states due to their Broadway transfer of the wildly successful Mamma Mia in the summer of ’01. My friend in London ripped the 1996 recording of Kristina (at 30kbps, yikes) and sent it my way. It remained, low quality, in my collection for 15 years until I recently acquired a decent recording, prompting me to give it a focused, well-deserved full listen-through. I listened to this album around 3 times over the course of the week, often jumping back a few numbers to reevaluate and re-live the songs.

Act 1 highlights for me include the exclamatory song “Nej!” (“No”) and the haunting choral number “Vi öppnar alla grindar” (“We Open Up The Gateways”). Both numbers highlight Andersson’s ability weave powerful solos with layered choral numbers, and beautiful orchestrations, never giving us a dull moment. The track “Blonder pa havet” takes us soaring through the clouds with a string-heavy melody. As soon as you think Act 1 is slowing down, we are hit with a bass-heavy, One-Night-In-Bangkok-y, driving number Löss (“Lice”), with a creepy, skin-crawling, driving tempo of 7/8 time, this song keeps us on our toes and our hairs raised. Helen Sjöholm delivers verbose, Swedish lines with fierceness and incredible speed. The chorus responds with emotion to her cries and by the end, you can almost feel the lice crawling all over your body. Act 1 ends with “Min Anstrakan” (My Apple Tree), an Anthem-esque theme, which is quite beautiful.

Act 2 begins with a proper entr’acte that showcases the scores blend of classical/acoustic and mild-electric sounds, and then dives into a “Merano” style chorus. I’ll be honest, Act 2 doesn’t grab my attention like some of the numbers in Act 1, which doesn’t surprise me as I’ve never seen the show and have not formed an emotional connection to the plot or characters. The music is worth everything though. “Ljusa kvallar om varen” feels like a slower and more mellow version of Chess’ Mountain Duet. It’s clear that Anderrson has a very specific style to his music: beautiful, soaring string-heavy melodies interlaced with driving upbeat tempo pop songs with a driving electro beat, with Kristina’s music usually falling into the former category.

Not having seen the show, I don’t know much of the story, but you can feel the shift from a feeling of hope and excitement in Act 1 into a more tragic Act 2, full of desperation and loss. A quick glance at a plot summary confirms this and… oh my, it’s tragic indeed! Spoiler: after suffering a miscarriage halfway through Act 2, she succumbs to death in her husbands arms. The melodies leading up to the Act 2 finale confirm a feeling of sadness, loss, and hurt. We get a heart-racing argument in “Prariens drotting” into an oddly tempo-ed song Vildgras with a major lift in the melody, and a driving chorus with a full choir. Middle of Act 2 we hear the moving ballad “Gold Can Turn To Sand,” which I believe had some moderate commercial success in Sweden, understandably so. By the song Wild Cat Money, I now fully feel the sensation of impending despair. After a few more slightly depressing melodies, we hear her death in the last number. Not speaking Swedish, I can still feel the pain, suffering, and love in her voice.

In conclusion, although Andersson is not a hugely prolific theatre composer, he has marked the industry with his own, unique style. Any fan of the epic musical tragedy genre should give this one a listen, and if you’re a fan of Chess, you’ll definitely enjoy this one.

Brooklynite (2015 Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording)

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Sometimes a placeholder is needed in my collection. A recording, often a soundboard, audience bootleg, DVD audio rip, etc., that is listed amongst luckier shows that garnered official recordings. Examples of this include Carrie Broadway Soundboard, Rent Workshop Bootleg, Cats 1998 West End DVD rip, Lestat and Dracula Soundboards, to name a few. These are albums I want listed in my collection because they mark a landmark, or significant production.

Brooklynite had a brief run off-broadway, and it never received a full cast-album treatment, let alone a Broadway transfer. Luckily, composer Peter Lerman posted a faux-cast album on soundcloud for us to hear what the score sounds like in most of its entirety. The “album” is comprised of studio recordings as well as stage recordings (soundboard? audience?) The album exceeds my expectations of what living in the borough of Brooklyn might “sound” like. It’s cute, funny, melodious, and sweet. Candy for the ears.

Every city has its own character, aspects, and personality. You can hear 1960s Baltimore come to life in Hairspray, 1800s London in Sweeney Todd, and early 2000s Newfoundland in Come From Away. Lerman does a great job at transporting us to the modern hustle and bustle of Brooklyn life. The sounds of the city and the characters we encounter paint a very clear picture of Brooklyn. The picture is not perfect, it’s a very clean score, but the grittier side of the city is captured less, even though the characters speak about their desire to make Brooklyn, and the world, a better place. The lack of grime and dirt is just fine for me. There’s an almost idealistic charm about the album. It sounds sweet and adorable, and it never really loses my interest, nor does it lack depth.

Some of my favorite tracks are the introductory superhero “theme songs.” These short theme songs create a cartoony and videogame vibe to the soundtrack, giving us some insight into the imagination of the protagonists. But the real delicious melodies come out in the middle of the album in the back to back tracks “Key to the City,” “Science of Flight,” and “Little White Lie.” The music is not too complicated, some basic 1-4-5 chord structures, with some major lifts and key changes to keep us engaged. Lerman grabs my attention with the chorus of Science of Flight, and I can hear the city come alive in my head. The jingle of shop doors, the rhythm of people walking, the vastness of the city, it’s all captured in this song. The melody of the chorus picks us up and sends us soaring through the city. Moments like this are the reason I obsess over cast recordings. Sonic moments that transport us out of our own lives. Out of the pandemic. Out of our heads. A brief respite from the incessant nagging of anxiety and depression in our lives.

The show ends with some lovely harmonious and fun duets and ensemble numbers. After a full listen, I’ll usually go back and re-listen to Science of Flight. It’s sad to think I’ll never get to see this show, but I’m grateful that many of the melodies were preserved in this makeshift recording. It’s nice to have a semi-complete placeholder so that Brooklynite can be alive in my collection.

Guess I’ll go pack my things and move to Brooklyn….