Mandy Albrecht

The relationship between Oscar Hammerstein II and Stephen Sondheim is among the most confounding in the American musical theater. On the one hand, Hammerstein was Sondheim's spiritual father, the guiding force who led him to become a writer of theater songs. On the other, the optimistic, wholesome attitude expressed in Hammerstein's lyrics and librettos could not be more different from the skeptical, subversive wit of Sondheim. Mandy Patinkin confronted this dichotomy head-on in his fourth album, alternating songs by the two, following Hammerstein's "If I Loved You" with Sondheim's "I Wish I Could Forget You," Hammerstein's "Honey Bun" with Sondheim's "Not a Day Goes By." Those juxtapositions emphasized the differences, but Patinkin also found similarities in some pairings.

Gerd Albrecht was a leading German conductor. He was best known for his interpretations of late Romantic and 20th century German repertory. His father was Hans Albrecht (1902-1961), a well-known musicologist. He was a choral scholar at the age of 15 and began conducting when he was 16. He studied at the Hamburg Musikhochschule (Hamburg Music Academy) from 1955 to 1958.