As well as presenting the musical's theatrical score in its entirety, Kunzel's album included the additional numbers that Rodgers had composed for Robert Wise's much garlanded 1965 movie.

It had been improved by the addition of "a charming little verse never before recorded", and further enhanced by "the mellow duetting of [Frederica] von Stade and Håkan Hagegård", "with the strings of the Cincinnati Pops providing a lovely velvet-like sheen as a backdrop".

[2] As the Mother Abbess, Eileen Farrell was strong and assured in "Climb ev'ry mountain", "that solo that's an open invitation to sing flat", making it seem all the stranger that she had been denied her rightful place duetting with Maria in "My favorite things".

The children cast as the young von Trapps sang cheerfully, and Telarc's engineering was of audiophile grade - the entry of the church organ in "Processional" was "designed to raise the roof".

It demonstrated, he wrote, that it was possible to "breathe fresh life into the score of a major Broadway musical" by entrusting it to a judiciously chosen crossover cast, a US symphony orchestra and a top-class conductor.

[3] The singer in Andrews's shoes was Frederica von Stade, "a wonderfully warm and vocally glowing Maria" who seemed entirely at home in her sabbatical from opera (except when she was called upon to yodel in "The lonely goatherd").

[1] The CD was accompanied by a 20-page insert booklet offering biographies of the principal artists and a detailed history and synopsis of the musical by Allen Cohen, all in English only.