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Alan Menken's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) - 2021 Walt Disney Records Legacy Collection


Romão

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Too bad there weren't more German versions included or additional orchestral cues from it (I seem to remember the musical version of Sanctuary was pretty awesome)

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Yeah I've no idea what decisions were behind what got included on this edition. I do think there's a full album of the German version though?

 

EDIT: apparently a German cast album was recorded in 1999...and another recording happened in 2017:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunchback_of_Notre_Dame_(musical)


Yavar

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Der Glockner von Notre Dame, the German cast album, is brilliant. James Lapine helped with the show's German transformation. It is much darker, Esmeralda dies, the gargoyles are figments of his imagination, etc. if you can find it in lossless or on CD, grab it immediately. It is one of my all-time favorite discs to spin. The Act 1 Finale, Esmeralda, will leave you breathless.

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Just now, blondheim said:

Der Glockner von Notre Dame, the German cast album, is brilliant. James Lapine helped with the show's German transformation. It is much darker, Esmeralda dies, the gargoyles are figments of his imagination, etc. if you can find it in lossless or on CD, grab it immediately. It is one of my all-time favorite discs to spin. The Act 1 Finale, Esmeralda, will leave you breathless.

 

Yeah, but it's in German.

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Just now, Jurassic Shark said:

 

Yeah, but it's in German.

 

German is an awesome language and I listen to it all the time. Yeah you miss out on a couple of interesting Schwartz lyrics ("Whatever their pitch, you can feel them bewitch you, the rich and the ritual knells...) but the extra music by Menken is the draw. It's better than the additional material he wrote for any of the other stage expansions. The German chorus is the best I have ever heard on any cast album I think. The mixing is fantastic. They just know what they are doing over there.

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Now THIS is a release I'm excited about! Why are the track names so stupidly long, though?

 

Also, I don't know how I feel about the German additions. Part of me would like all the dubbed versions you can hear in the movie, but then I looked up Hellfire in Dutch and the lyrics were absolutely terrible, so...

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14 minutes ago, Yavar Moradi said:

 

How many discs would that require? The 2017 recording too or just the 1999 one?

 

Yavar

 

Good question. Truth be told, I've only heard the 2017 recording. Which one is best?

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The German cast recording is the way to go, I promise you. They made some changes to the American version of Glockner such as deleting Clopin and making it a chorus instead. Also, the songs are changed yet again. It is sort of like the situation with the Beauty and the Beast remake: new songs for no good reason I can discern.

 

I always come back to Der Glockner. Listening to Quasimodo trying to wake Esmeralda up is something you don't come back from.

 

Oh! and then he throws Frollo off the tower.

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But which German cast recording @blondheim? According to that Wikipedia page I linked to above, there was a 1999 one and a more recent 2017 one, which is what @Romão has. There was also an English cast recording in between those two, which I assume is what you're referring to.

 

Yavar

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5 minutes ago, Yavar Moradi said:

But which German cast recording @blondheim? According to that Wikipedia page I linked to above, there was a 1999 one and a more recent 2017 one, which is what @Romão has. There was also an English cast recording in between those two, which I assume is what you're referring to.

 

Yavar

 

Oh! I didn't know. The 1999

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Just now, Romão said:

And we don‘t get the Esmeralda song. It was featured on both the German and English cast recordings

 

Esmeralda wasn't written for the movie so it shouldn't be on this Legacy release except as a bonus track. They didn't choose any of the new songs from the musical as bonus tracks only Bells and Out There, I am assuming that was done on purpose.

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I'm pretty sure when Bruce Botnick spoke with The Goldsmith Odyssey about this, he said the two discs were absolutely packed. I'm sure they had to prioritize what to include. People who want the cast albums can buy the cast albums. I'm not sure fans of the film/film score would have necessarily been happy about having to pay for more than a 2 disc set (four, five, or maybe even six discs would be required...if including every one of the musical cast albums in full). I think it makes sense that they include the complete music written for the film, plus any demo material and such, and then it's a cool bonus for them to also fill out the rest of disc 2 with what they can...in this case some of the musical.

 

For anyone interested, the 1999 German cast recording is pretty inexpensive secondhand: https://www.discogs.com/Alan-Menken-Stephen-Schwartz-James-Lapine-Disneys-Der-Glöckner-Von-Notre-Dame-Die-Höhepunkte-Der-W/release/5982656

 

The English cast album recorded in 2015 does seem rather harder to find... https://www.discogs.com/Alan-Menken-Stephen-Schwartz-Brent-Alan-Huffman-The-Hunchback-Of-Notre-Dame-Studio-Cast-Recording/release/9157797

 

And I'm not finding the German 2017 recording on Discogs easily, but here's a review of it with a cover image:

https://www.musical1.de/news/nun-auf-cd-der-gloeckner-von-notre-dame/

 

Yavar

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51 minutes ago, blondheim said:

It is sort of like the situation with the Beauty and the Beast remake: new songs for no good reason I can discern.

For the movie it's obvious: grabbing for an best original song nomination.

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Just now, Holko said:

For the movie it's obvious: grabbing for an best original song nomination.

 

Sure but write a new end credits ditty, don't fill the movie with that shit

 

Not that I was ever interested in a B&tB remake anyway

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15 minutes ago, Romão said:

I like the orchestra in the American version of the Hunchback musical, but the singing is by far superior in the German version. And German really lends itself to this sort of music, doesn't it?

 

Yes, yes it does. Nothing more French-Disney than an apocalyptic German choir.

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29 minutes ago, blondheim said:

 

Phew. This is a big question.

 

Beauty and the Beast: Yes, undoubtedly. The new songs are gorgeous and written in 1993/1994, so during the height of Menken's powers. "If I Can't Love Her" is an incredible song for the Beast. It does have Tim Rice as a lyricist for the new songs, and he's no Howard Ashman, but they hold up alright. Better than Aladdin even, which necessitated the same Rice/Ashman pairing but with more of an obvious difference between who did what.

 

The Lion King you have so you know. It is very necessary.

 

The Little Mermaid has its moments, don't get me wrong. There are some fun new numbers but overall, they made a lot of mistakes. Ending changes, bad lyrics, it's a mess. "She's in Love" is a bop though, I don't care.

 

Aladdin is a travesty of travesties. I don't even know where to begin.

 

Tarzan is better than you'd expect or people give it credit for.

 

Mary Poppins is another great one. Really great new songs and really interesting new arrangements of old songs. I own this one on disc. The marriage between the old and new material is practically perfect in every way.

 

And then the big one, Der Glockner von Notre Dame. The best it's ever gonna get for Disney on stage. Avoid the American version. If it had Tony Jay, it would be the single greatest Disney disc I own, no contest.

 

 

I really enjoyed the Aladdin stage show, which I think is a lot of fun and I quite enjoy the extra songs, although I don't much like the extended version of Friend Like Me. Plus it has a couple of songs that were originally written for the movie but went unused when the main character dynamics changed. Aladdin originally had a group of friends rather than a monkey, but for the stage show they cut Abu - if I remember rightly - and reinstate the friends. Notably, Proud of Your Boy, which is lovely, and High Adventure which Menken described as writing an action cue with words that works surprisingly well. However it's a shame they couldn't find a space for Why Me which was written for Jafar and was fully recorded. It's like a weird mash-up of Broadway villain song and Bond, but absolutely brilliant. It's appeared as a bonus track a few times and I fully expect it'll appear on the eventual Legacy Edition (Proud of Your Boy was also fully recorded). The other new songs are pretty decent and much better than the weirdly inappropriate power ballad written for the live action remake which is OK, but doesn't fit with the rest of the songs at all.

 

BATB now has essentially three versions, the original film, the stage version with some excellent additional songs (my only real complaint is that it's a shame they didn't have a bigger orchestra for the cast recording as it really does deserve a 90 piece orchestra) and the live action remake which has different new songs. As @blondheim says, the new songs for the stage show are excellent. In common with the others, a lot of the songs are based on secondary themes from the movie underscore. I'm not sure whether those themes were originally expressly written for the score and repurposed as songs or if they are melodies of unused songs that Menken liked enough to turn into songs. Either way it means that the new songs connect even more with the original material.

 

I don't really know why people are so down on the US version of the Hunchback stage show, the album seems pretty great to me, albeit kinda dialled up to 11 a lot of the time. My only real complaint (which I've expressed before) is that almost the entire lyrics of the opening, titular song, have been changed to focus on Frollo and his brother rather than Quasimodo, which seems a very odd choice to me. Both versions are well worth getting and good to know that the German version is now more readily available.

 

I loved the Mary Poppins stage show, which makes quite a few changes to the film in terms of story and characters, but probably for the better and found the new songs to be utterly charming. Practically Perfect is probably the best song the Sherman Brothers never wrote. It is... (boom)... practically perfect. Utterly charming and witty.

 

Agree on Little Mermaid. It's fun, but not exactly earth shattering and yes, Tarzan is surprisingly decent. The additional Phil Collins songs (depending on your view on his music) are great. I always loved Phil Collins' songs to be fair; Son of Man, You'll be in My Heart and Strangers Like Me are especially great. I like that they didn't try to extend any of the original songs for the stage version, as so often is the case. Collins writes pop songs, they aren't meant to go on for 7 minutes. Also, another improvement is that the characters sing the songs rather than the songs being non-diegetic as in the film. There's an interesting YouTube video about how it disconnects the viewer in a way that isn't an issue when the characters are singing.

Oh and a PS... some custom cover art for Hunchback Legacy Edition... Fits the style and I prefer it slightly to the actual artwork. It was from a Pinterest page which had a load of Disney (and non-Disney) animated movie album alternative artwork. The one for Prince of Egypt was especially great.

Hunchback Legacy.jpg

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22 minutes ago, Tom Guernsey said:

I really enjoyed the Aladdin stage show, which I think is a lot of fun and I quite enjoy the extra songs, although I don't much like the extended version of Friend Like Me. Plus it has a couple of songs that were originally written for the movie but went unused when the main character dynamics changed. Aladdin originally had a group of friends rather than a monkey, but for the stage show they cut Abu - if I remember rightly - and reinstate the friends. Notably, Proud of Your Boy, which is lovely, and High Adventure which Menken described as writing an action cue with words that works surprisingly well. However it's a shame they couldn't find a space for Why Me which was written for Jafar and was fully recorded. It's like a weird mash-up of Broadway villain song and Bond, but absolutely brilliant. It's appeared as a bonus track a few times and I fully expect it'll appear on the eventual Legacy Edition (Proud of Your Boy was also fully recorded). The other new songs are pretty decent and much better than the weirdly inappropriate power ballad written for the live action remake which is OK, but doesn't fit with the rest of the songs at all.

 

I don't really know why people are so down on the US version of the Hunchback stage show, the album seems pretty great to me, albeit kinda dialled up to 11 a lot of the time. My only real complaint (which I've expressed before) is that almost the entire lyrics of the opening, titular song, have been changed to focus on Frollo and his brother rather than Quasimodo, which seems a very odd choice to me. Both versions are well worth getting and good to know that the German version is now more readily available.

 

I found the Aladdin stage show to be super gimmicky and the new lyrics are dreadful. Proud of Your Boy is lovely but that version of the show is long dead. The Music Behind The Magic box set of Aladdin has some nice demos of songs Ashman himself worked on and places the material in context at least. I would much rather listen to that. Ashman's material expanded and re-recorded would be the only way to lengthen Aladdin in a way that interests me. When I found out the Broadway production was going in a different direction I started to lose interest but then I heard the thing. Even the movie was pushing it with the songs Rice added. "Nom de plume" is not a phrase that should be in a street urchin's vocabulary. "Every moment red-letter" also stands out as being anachronistic but is almost interesting enough to pass. Re-recording Aladdin and not including any of that Ashman material was a sin. I am also not fond of the Genie referencing other shows in Friend Like Me. As per my username, I like my musicals a little less Herman and a little more Sondheim.

 

The US version of Hunchback. Michael Arden makes the same mistake Sean Penn makes in I Am Sam. That's number one. The opening is nonsensical as you mentioned. Who cares? There is a lot of over-acting, I agree. The constant reprises of numbers don't thrill me either. This isn't Sweeney Todd with the chorus, that's not what this show needs. Other than that it's passable, but mediocre in the extreme. Anyone, just listen to Esmeralda from both. I don't care if you don't understand a word of German, that performance is leagues above the other.

 

Buy Glockner. Spin Glockner. Once you all get into Glockner, then I can turn your attention to Tanz Der Vampire...

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Just now, Marian Schedenig said:

Shame about the German tracks. I was hoping there would be English tracks for the musical. I simply can't stand German musical style singing. At all.

 

:lol: I love it! I have many friends who agree with you and we fight about it all the time.

 

There's something so swoony about a really aggressive Ich liebe dich

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I have been yearning for this for ages

I still despair with ignorance as long as I dont see any tracktimes, because tracktitles alone make me worry some minor tracks were skipped. 

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8 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

 

AND IT'S HERE!!!

https://www.disneymusicemporium.com/product/XVCD52/legacy-collection-the-hunchback-of-notre-dame?cp=null

 

IMO Menken's greatest work aside from Pocahontas. Can't wait!

 

Yavar

 

FINALLY! Ordered with same day delivery!

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I REALLY hope, among other things, that the bells which accompany the quiet choral singing of a few verses of "Someday" in Latin at the very beginning of "The Bells of Notre Dame" are included in the first track of the same name. Just in case, though, can anyone who is able to PM me with a Blu-Ray audio rip of that?

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Very good. When they missed the film's anniversary date, I was beginning to think they were going to align the release date to that of a live-action remake.

 

Still puzzles me why Aladdin has been overlooked so far - unless they are aiming for 2022 which marks the film's 30th anniversary, a date that better fits into their 0th/5th pattern.

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33 minutes ago, Drawgoon said:

Still puzzles me why Aladdin has been overlooked so far - unless they are aiming for 2022 which marks the film's 30th anniversary, a date that better fits into their 0th/5th pattern.

 

I can't believe they haven't done Aladdin yet! That's shocking...

 

Maybe they wanted to give a wide berth to the live-action remake, to avoid confusion in the marketplace. Next year makes sense for the anniversary, yeah (also because that dreadful remake has long faded from people's memory).

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14 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

For anyone interested, the 1999 German cast recording is pretty inexpensive secondhand: https://www.discogs.com/Alan-Menken-Stephen-Schwartz-James-Lapine-Disneys-Der-Glöckner-Von-Notre-Dame-Die-Höhepunkte-Der-W/release/5982656

 

The English cast album recorded in 2015 does seem rather harder to find... https://www.discogs.com/Alan-Menken-Stephen-Schwartz-Brent-Alan-Huffman-The-Hunchback-Of-Notre-Dame-Studio-Cast-Recording/release/9157797

 

And I'm not finding the German 2017 recording on Discogs easily, but here's a review of it with a cover image:

https://www.musical1.de/news/nun-auf-cd-der-gloeckner-von-notre-dame/

 

Yavar

 

Most of this has already been mentioned, but I have to second the strong recommendation for the 1999 "Glöckner" cast album. Sure, the German vocals need some getting used to, but musically it's just so far superior to the reworked '15 version of the show! I was hugely excited when the US cast album got released (finally, the musical with its original lyrics!) and then quickly deflated when listening to it and noticing that a) many great new songs from the '99 version were cut or lessened, b) the orchestra sounded a lot smaller, and c) they tried to make up for that by amping up the drum kit and piano, which (at least for me) makes it sounds even smaller and "poppier".

 

The incredible ending to Quasimodo's "Wie aus Stein" (Made of Stone) alone makes it worthwhile, no comparison.

 

I haven't heard the 2017 German album, but have seen the new show in Berlin - musically it's the same as the 2015 US one. A good musical in its own right (and some of the new songs are worthy additions), but the '99 version is just so much better.

 

(on the original topic: mightily looking forward to the Legacy Collection :))

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7 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

I hope the remastering will be better than the terrible B&tB legacy set.


Terrible? The only issue I found with that was crossfading. Were there other issues? Regardless, seeing as how Bruce Botnick himself was directly involved with this upcoming set, I’d be surprised and disappointed if the remaster wasn’t good.

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I'm not a fan of compression, but this was really extreme, vocals too loud and just an unnecessary quiet volume. You know, where you have to turn it all the way up even though it could perfectly well have been fixed.

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For the curious, here’s the full album of the ‘99stage German production of Der Glockner (this playlist is missing the opening number for some odd reason and one or two songs may be blocked depending on the country)

 

And if you’re willing to watch a terribly recorded version, here’s a recording of the entire ‘99 German stage production. You can see  how ornate and aesthetically dark the overall production was.

 

The songs that are unique to this production and not in the US mounted version are:

Tanz Auf Dem Seil”(Tightrope/Balancing Act) - A song that introduces us fully to Clopin, the gypsies, and Esmerelda 

“Trommeln in der Stadt” (Drumming in the City)- opening of act two. Established how “all of Paris is burning” as Frollo searches for Esmerelda.

“Wei du liebst” (Because you love/Out of love) - Phoebus and Quasi sing of their love for Esmerelda. Probably the most soaring and gorgeous new melody written for the show. Real shame it was dropped in the US version. There’s a middle Gypsy dance chunk (Tanz der Zigeuner) followed by another reprise (Wei du liebst reprise)

I’d say the US version retains about 70% of the book and music from this 99 version. Thankfully the tremendous Finale is pretty much the same. What a knockout of a closer!

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2 hours ago, WampaRat said:

For the curious, here’s the full album of the ‘99stage German production of Der Glockner (this playlist is missing the opening number for some odd reason and one or two songs may be blocked depending on the country)

 

And if you’re willing to watch a terribly recorded version, here’s a recording of the entire ‘99 German stage production. You can see  how ornate and aesthetically dark the overall production was.

 

The songs that are unique to this production and not in the US mounted version are:

Tanz Auf Dem Seil”(Tightrope/Balancing Act) - A song that introduces us fully to Clopin, the gypsies, and Esmerelda 

“Trommeln in der Stadt” (Drumming in the City)- opening of act two. Established how “all of Paris is burning” as Frollo searches for Esmerelda.

“Wei du liebst” (Because you love/Out of love) - Phoebus and Quasi sing of their love for Esmerelda. Probably the most soaring and gorgeous new melody written for the show. Real shame it was dropped in the US version. There’s a middle Gypsy dance chunk (Tanz der Zigeuner) followed by another reprise (Wei du liebst reprise)

I’d say the US version retains about 70% of the book and music from this 99 version. Thankfully the tremendous Finale is pretty much the same. What a knockout of a closer!

Definitely time to revisit this one. Does anyone know of the opening number uses the original lyrics or were they the revised ones as per the US stage version? I’m actually fairly certain it’s a translation of the movie lyrics but my GFSC German isn’t up to much these days…

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9 minutes ago, Tom Guernsey said:

Definitely time to revisit this one. Does anyone know of the opening number uses the original lyrics or were they the revised ones as per the US stage version? I’m actually fairly certain it’s a translation of the movie lyrics but my GFSC German isn’t up to much these days…

 

It's slightly different than the movie but not completely different like the new version.

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15 minutes ago, Tom Guernsey said:

Definitely time to revisit this one. Does anyone know of the opening number uses the original lyrics or were they the revised ones as per the US stage version? I’m actually fairly certain it’s a translation of the movie lyrics but my GFSC German isn’t up to much these days…

I think the German 99 one was fairly close to the animated films opening. The revamped US version actually goes into a back story about Frollo and his brother Jehan. Jehan lives “wildly” and runs off with a Gypsy woman while Frollo “ascends the ranks of Notre Dame” to become archdeacon. He finds his brother in a plague house with a baby who he asks Frollo to take care of when he (Jehan) dies. So baby Quasi is Frollo’s nephew in the sorry. Pretty tragic or soapy depending on your point of view. 
 

Frollo (when played right) is actually a very tragic and pitiful character. He can be much more than a one-dimensional mustache-twirly villain.
 

The production I’m currently in was given the task to make the audience actually buy into Frollo at the beginning of the story, thus making his madness and obsession with “purity” that much more tragic. “What makes a monster and what makes a man?”The choices we make 😊

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16 hours ago, Drawgoon said:

Still puzzles me why Aladdin has been overlooked so far - unless they are aiming for 2022 which marks the film's 30th anniversary, a date that better fits into their 0th/5th pattern.


Aladdin is most likely going to be the next release as part of Walt Disney Records The Legacy Collection sometime in 2022 to coincide with the film’s 30th anniversary.

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