Stephen Sondheim - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Nonesuch

£40.50

CATALOGUE NO.: 0075597920154
FORMAT - 2xLP
RELEASE DATE 13th Nov 2020
Genres - Soundtrack

Track Listing
A1. Opening Title
A2. No Place Like London
A3. The Worst Pies in London
A4. Poor Thing
A5. My Friends
B1. Green Finch and Linnett Bird
B2. Alms Alms
B3. Johanna
B4. Pirelli's Miracle Elixir
B5. The Contest
B6. Wait
B7. Ladies in Their Sensitivities
B8. Pretty Women
C1. Epiphany
C2. A Little Priest
C3. Johanna (Reprise)
C4. God, That's Good!
D1. By the Sea
D2. Not While I'm Around
D3. Final Scene

Nonesuch releases on vinyl, for the first time, the soundtrack to the 2007 Tim Burton–directed, Oscar-winning film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s 1979 Tony Award–winning musical, Sweeney Todd, starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, and Sacha Baron Cohen, all of whom sing their own parts.

Based on the macabre Victorian legend of London’s ‘Demon Barber of Fleet Street’, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd has stood for over 40 years as one of the composer’s most celebrated musical theatre creations, as well as his most operatic score. In 2007, with Depp in the title role, Burton unveiled the first major realisation of a Sondheim work for the screen — and it is a darkly masterful cinematic tour de force.

The songs and score boldly propel the action in Burton’s sixth collaboration with Depp, making his singing debut as the falsely imprisoned barber transformed into a murderer by his thirst for revenge. Bonham Carter serves as his pie-baking accomplice, Mrs. Lovett, who finds a wickedly savoury means to dispose of Todd’s victims, and British star Rickman is the scheming Judge Turpin. As with every actor in the film, including Baron Cohen as rival barber Pirelli, they perform all their own vocals to impressive effect, complemented by Jonathan Tunick’s rich orchestrations.

The film’s art direction is in keeping with Burton’s typically ambitious vision – an arresting chiaroscuro vision of 19th century London cast in shades of grey and sepia and tinted colour, punctuated with splashes of blood red, with a scenic atmosphere that is almost palpable. Depp told audiences at the 2007 Venice Film Festival, after they’d finished cheering a ten-minute preview of Sweeney Todd, “Tim is a rare breed in today’s cinema: he is a true original, a true artist, a true auteur.”