Music Reviews: Donny Osmond ****"This is the Moment," ****^"The Best of Andrew Lloyd Weber"

These CDs we have in our personal library as they are downloaded to Itunes.  The first, for the most part, This is an album of Donny Osmond singing songs from musicals.  Because he is putting them in the context of pop music rather than in the musical setting, they at times lack the emotion that goes with the song.  A couple cases in point would be "This is the Moment" the title song.  It just doesn't have the same flavor as when Dr Jekyll is considering consuming his own substance he has created to test it.  Also his version of "Anythng's Possible" lacks the dancing fish the version of Caleb on You Tube from when he was in Suessical.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da1l8CSeEAA
However his other song from Seussical, "Solla Sollew" is very well done.  Listening to Donny Osmond and Vanessa Williams sing, "Not While I'm Around" is just beautiful.  He ventures out of the musical realm and sings "You've Got  Friend in Me" From Toy Story.  He also provides some musical theater history singing George M. Cohan's "Give my Regards to Broadway."

The Donny Osmond song I like the best however, is from the other album, "Best of Andrew Lloyd Weber" "Close Every Door."  Donny singing with the children's choir is just perfection.  This album also offers excerpts from "Phantom of the Opera."  I has Sarah Brightman singing "Piu Jesu." A couple other highlights are Michael Ball singing "Love Changes Everything" and Mandy Patikin and Patty Lupone singing "High Flying Adored."  Mandy Patikin is exquisite in this rendition.  I am also partial to this as this is the cast I saw in New York.  Another perfect song is Glen Close singing "With one Look."  There are a couple songs that I don't enjoy.  One is "Jesus Christ Superstar"  Combining Christ and rock music doesn't work for me.