Fragile Tamara Webber

Marking the triumphant return of live music to London's West End, Andrew Lloyd Webber has brought together an 81-piece orchestra to record Symphonic Suites - an album featuring three newly-orchestrated suites from his award-winning musicals Evita, Phantom of the Opera and Sunset Boulevard. This recording is the first live performance to take place at the newly refurbished Theatre Royal Drury Lane, following his LW Theatres' 2-year, œ60m total restoration.

Surrender was released five years after the end of Sarah's marriage to Andrew Lloyd Webber, a testament to their continued mutual professional respect. The description below is taken from the album's liner notes, written by Lloyd Webber: “I first worked with Sarah Brightman in 1980 when she joined the original cast of CATS. I was always very impressed by the potential of her voice and began writing for her in 1983.

For better or worse, Andrew Lloyd Webber's adaptation of Gaston Leroux's gothic horror/romance novel has done for stage musicals what Spielberg's Jaws did for fish stories, with worldwide sales of its original cast album approaching 25 million. While director Joel Schumacher's film turns on his typically ambitious visual verve, its new film soundtrack recording has been paradoxically focused in scope, yet beefed up dynamically via the brawny presence of a hundred piece orchestra and The London Boys Choir. This double-disc version showcases all of Phantom's songs, with Gerard Butler imparting a welcome, youthful sensuality to his Phantom, making a fine foil for Emily Rossum's ever-conflicted Christine. Original show orchestrator David Cullen has fashioned compelling new contemporary arrangements to frame Webber's songs–which now conclude with the lilting, upbeat new ballad he wrote for the film, "Learn to Be Lonely," sung by Minnie Driver's Carlotta.