My Funny Valentine: Frederica von Stade sings Rodgers and Hart is a 69-minute studio album of songs from Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's musicals, performed in historically authentic versions by von Stade, Rosemary Ashe, Peta Bartlett, Lynda Richardson, the Ambrosian Chorus and the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of John McGlinn. It was released in 1990.
Contents
Background
The album was the third that von Stade and McGlinn made together, coming after their recordings of Jerome Kern's Show Boat and Cole Porter's Anything Goes. Like its predecessors, the album presents its music in original orchestrations where these are extant.
According to McGlinn, the album's track 13 is the first instance of "Now that I know you" being recorded.
Recording
The album was digitally recorded in September 1989 in Studio No. 1, Abbey Road, London.
Cover art
The cover of the album features a photograph of von Stade taken by Julian Broad.
Critical reception
Reviews
Adrian Edwards reviewed the album in Gramophone in February 1991. Frederica von Stade's anthology of songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart was, he wrote, "well-nigh indispensable". It presented an imaginative mixture of numbers that listeners would already know and others that they would probably be hearing for the first time. They would discover that Rodgers and Hart had come up with many songs just as enjoyable as "Bewitched, bothered and bewildered" or the CD's title track.
Edwards had approached the disc unsure about whether he would like it or not. Von Stade was an opera singer, and a high mezzo-soprano. Most of the songs on her disc had been conceived for voices that were lower than hers, and that had been trained for Broadway rather than for bel canto. ("Falling in love with love" was one of the few of the album's songs that Rodgers had intended for a voice of the von Stade kind.) As things turned out, she suited the repertoire well. In her earlier Rodgers album - Erich Kunzel's recording of The Sound of Music - she had not seemed as deeply engaged with Oscar Hammerstein's lyrics as she might have been. Surprisingly, although Rodgers and Hart's work was more remote from opera than Rodgers and Hammerstein's, the former elicited "a far keener" response from von Stade than the latter, "the Rodgers of the 1920s and 1930s [bringing] a far livelier personality to the fore" than the composer of 1959.
It was difficult to say which of the tracks on von Stade's album was the best. She was good in typical interwar fare like "Atlantic blues", and just as good in introspective numbers like "A ship without a sail". Her record reminded one that there was more to Hart than his "sharp, cynical way with a rhyme"; he could also dream up romantic couplets like "You're nearer than my head is to my pillow, Nearer than the wind is to the willow". "The accompanying Rodgers tune, if you'll forgive the pun, would melt any heart."
As in his seminal recordings of Show Boat and Anything Goes, John McGlinn had presented his material in a form as close as possible to that of its first performance. The period orchestrations which he had championed "[did not] miss a trick to underline the syncopation in Rodgers's writing". The playing of the London Symphony Orchestra was "tip-top", and McGlinn's advocacy of Rodgers and Hart was enthusiastic. The album's only fault was that its accompanying booklet gave an inaccurate date for Rodgers's death. Edward expected that "at a ration of three or four songs per sitting", he would return to it many times.
Accolade
Writing in Gramophone in January 1992, Adrian Edwards included the album in his Critics' Choice list of the best recordings of the year.
CD track listing
Music by Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) and lyrics by Lorenz Hart (1895-1943)
1 (4:34) "My Funny Valentine" from Babes in Arms (1937); orchestration by Hans Spialek (1894-1983)
2 (4:52) "I Must Love You" from Chee-Chee (1928); orchestration by Roy Webb (1888-1982)
3 (4:34) "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" from Too Many Girls (1939); orchestration by Hans Spialek
4 (3:46) "Moon of My Delight" from Chee-Chee; orchestration by Roy Webb
5 (4:02) "Ev'rybody Loves You" from I'd Rather Be Right (1937); orchestration by Hans Spialek
6 (5:01) "A Ship without A Sail" from Heads Up! (1929); anonymous orchestration
7 (5:10) "Quiet Night" from On Your Toes (1938); orchestration by Hans Spialek; with the Ambrosian Chorus
8 (3:56) "To Keep My Love Alive" from A Connecticut Yankee (1943 revival); orchestration by Don Walker (1907-1989)
9 (2:34) "Love Never Went to College" from Too Many Girls; orchestration by Hans Spialek
10 (3:28) "You're Nearer" from Too Many Girls (1940 film version); orchestration by Larry Moore (verse) and Hans Spialek
11 (3:48) "If I Were You" from Betsy (1926); orchestration by Stephen Jones and Hans Spialek; with Rosemary Ashe, Lynda Richardson and Peta Bartlett
Personnel
Musical
Frederica von Stade, singer
Rosemary Ashe, singer
Lynda Richardson, singer
Peta Bartlett, singer
The Ambrosian Chorus
John McCarthy, chorus master
The London Symphony Orchestra
John McGlinn (1953-2009), conductor
Other
Simon Woods, producer
John Kurlander, balance engineer
Release history
In 1990, EMI Records released the album on LP (catalogue number EL 754071-1), cassette (catalogue number EL 754071-4) and CD (catalogue number CDC7 54071-2). The CD came with a 28-page insert booklet including texts of all the songs in English and detailed notes on each of them by John McGlinn in English, French and German.