Barbara Cook in Mostly Sondheim on DVD

Call me stereotypically gay, but Barbara Cook is one of my favorites. She infuses her performances with more of herself than many singers and has better legato singing than any musical theater singer. I think it is that good legato which has kept her voice as relatively fresh as it is as she reaches her 80th birthday.

This concert of Mostly Sondheim was taped when Ms. Cook was only 75. I don't know many 75 year olds who could sustain a whole recital, let alone one I want to hear sing a high B-natural.

As the title of this concert indicates, the program is more than half music by Stephen Sondheim along with songs Mr. Sondheim stated in a 1999 article he wished he had written. I had heard most of the Sondheim songs before, but many of the non-Sondheim fare was new and delightful to me. I was particularly taken with the Harold Arlen songs near the beginning of the program. I must check out more of Arlen. Also fun to hear sung in a very different way are the two songs from Annie Get Your Gun--definitely not a role I would equate with fine legato singing. Ms. Cook proves that there is not only one way to sing a song when it is a good song being sung by a good singer.

Barbara Cook in Mostly Sondheim
Music by Stephen Sondheim and others
Lyric by ditto
Musical direction and pianist Wally Harper
Taped before a live audience in 2002, released in 2003