Carousel

Staff

... Conductor	Paul Gemignani
... Producer	Thomas Z. Shepard
... Engineers	Keith Grant Ben Rizzi

Cast

... Julie Jordan	Barbara Cook
... Billy Bigelow	Samuel Ramey
... Carrie Pipperidge	Sarah Brightman
... Enoch Snow	David Rendall
... Nettie Fowler	Maureen Forrester
... Jigger Craigin	John Parry
... Chorus	Ambrosian Chorus

Tracks

The orchestra on this recording is the Royal Philharmonic.

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New orchestrations were created for this recording. The orchestrators were by Colin Appleton, Antony Fones, John Gregory, Peter Hope and Roland Shaw. In an interview in Show Music magazine, Thomas Z. Shepard, who produced the recording, said that the new orchestrations were commissioned not by choice but by necessity. When MCA and Shepard were planning the recording, they expected to use the licensed orchestrations (mostly by Don Walker), but the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization refused to allow them to use the orchestrations. Once a piece of music has had a commercially issued recording, the rights-holders cannot prevent a new recording of the music from being issued, but if they own the rights to the orchestrations, they can prevent their use. 

In this case, according to Shepard, at the time Sony was considering producing a recording of the Carousel score that would star Mandy Patinkin as Billy Bigelow, and the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization particuarly wished for that recording to be made. The Organization was afraid that the recording would be canceled if there was to be competition from another recording coming out at approximately the same time. 

Despite being refused the right to use the licensed orchestrations, MCA went ahead with the recording. In addition, the ballet music, which at that time had never been recorded, was recorded by MCA (with new orchestrations). Since the music had never been recorded before for commercial release, the Rodgers and Hammerstein was able to block MCA from including it.

Shepard did not mention that he had also been hoping to have Patinkin on the recording he was planning, but that was mentioned in an article in the New York Times that was published a couple of months before the first sessions for the recording.