Jesus Christ Superstar started life as a most improbable concept album from an equally unlikely label, Decca Records, which had not, until then, been widely known for groundbreaking musical efforts. It was all devised by then 21-year-old composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and 25-year-old lyricist Tim Rice. Jesus Christ Superstar had been conceived as a stage work, but lacking the funds to get it produced, the two collaborators instead decided to use an album as the vehicle for introducing the piece, a fairly radical rock/theater hybrid about the final days in the life of Jesus as seen from the point of view of Judas. If its content seemed daring (and perhaps downright sacrilegious), the work, a "sung-through" musical echoing operatic and oratorio traditions, was structurally perfect for an album; just as remarkable as its subject matter was the fact that its musical language was full-blown rock music.

This is an essential package! Whoever put this together obviously knew what they were doing, and all is placed in chronological order. Discs 1-3 are a terrific compilation of material from the MGM years, consisting of commercial recordings of soundtrack materal. If no recording was commercially released, the original soundtrack is used-great for such numbers as "Hoe Down" with Mickey Rooney! But the last disc makes this package essential-here is a pristine soundboard recording of Judy's final performance at the Palace Theater, MYC-2/24/52! She was concluding a 19-week engagement, and the atmosphere is electric. Fantastic stuff!

This new West Side Story, the first American-based recording to appear since DG’s star-studded 1985 composer-conducted version, blessedly avoids that earlier production’s operatic pretensions, returning instead to the work’s Broadway roots by using young, theatrically trained singers with some genuine acting ability. Even with that, it’s probably wishful thinking to expect that this cast (fine as it is) can recreate the vibrant, raw freshness and scintillating brilliance of the original. Mike Eldred’s Tony comes off best; singing with a more mature sound than Larry Kert, he nonetheless creates a sense of heightened expectancy and wonder in “Something’s Coming”.

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! was first performed in 1943, and was a significant turning point in the history of musical theatre. It was the first musical to put drama and plot to the fore, portrayed by rounded, believable characters. It swept aside traditions that had their roots in vaudeville – star turns, comic sketches, and endless lines of high-kicking chorus girls. Oklahoma! does feature dance, but in the hands of the choreographer, Agnes de Mille, this was idiomatic to the plot, and revolutionary in terms of the fifteen-minute dream-sequence ballet at the close of Act I. The first collaboration between composer and writer, the show was a hit, running for more than five years on Broadway, and paving the way for their masterpieces to come.