Laney Webber

This recording, featuring what amounts to virtually an all-star contingent of players - including Rod Argent, Herbie Flowers (whose playing is outstanding throughout), Jon Hiseman, and Gary Moore - is reminiscent of other rock-classical hybrids of the period, a slightly awkward fit highlighted by charming and delightful moments, along with some bracing moments for the band.
This is a genuine oddity in the career output of Andrew Lloyd Webber, growing out of a personal/familial vignette. The piece, a set of variations on Niccolo Paganini's "Caprice No. 24" (which had previously inspired adaptations by Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms, Sergei Rachmaninov, and Boris Blacher, among others), came about because Andrew Lloyd Webber lost a bet with his cellist brother Julian Lloyd Webber…

As the most anticipated musical of the millennium, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies is almost guaranteed a lukewarm reception. Being the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, the most successful musical of all time, tends to have that effect…

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.