New 'Sound of Music' deluxe 5-disc set offers a fresh perspective on classic musical

Everyone loves The Sound of Music. (Deep down, you know you do.) It has proven, over almost 60 years, to be more than just nuns and Nazis, stubbornly outlasting its schmaltzy reputation. And it can make the claim that it is one of the few, if only, musicals in which music itself is a character, one that moves the plot and causes the human characters to change.

You know the now-legendary tunes, which include “My Favorite Things,” “Do-Re-Mi” and “Edelweiss.” The movie’s soundtrack has been available for years, but now comes a masterful five-disc Super Deluxe Edition (Craft Recordings; $109) that gives prominence to the 1965 film’s entire score, not just those famous melodies. For the first time, the surviving studio scoring master tapes have been combined with the original album, filling the set’s first two CDs.

Here we see the genius of composer/arranger Irwin Kostal, who was contractually obligated to build a score around the music that Richard Rodgers had composed for the stage in 1959. Kostal used transitional music written for that version by Russell Bennett and Trude Rittmann as a springboard; in his hands, the familiar music is combined and recombined in ways that might be too subtle to notice while you’re concentrating on the dialogue (and that fabulous scenery), but that contribute mightily to the film’s power.

Some keen-eared listeners will already have picked up, for example, that the rollicking “The Lonely Goatherd” was repurposed into the gentle waltz-time “The Laendler,” in which Maria and Captain von Trapp share an intimate pas de deux at the ball. Trickier to discern is that “My Favorite Things” forms the spine of the “Grand Waltz,” which opens the ball scene, and that “Edelweiss,” orchestrated as a sweeping waltz, closes Act I.

Indeed, even before it is first sung, “Edelweiss” forms a through line for the movie, as befits a song honoring the homeland that figures so prominently in the plot. See if you can find all the references! (Fun fact: It’s not a beloved Austrian folk tune but was written for the musical; the Salzburgians who played singing extras at the festival had to learn it on the fly.)

Kostal also used musical cues to foreshadow, call back and even play sly jokes. How witty is the snippet of “I Have Confidence” in the scene in which Maria finds the frog the children left in her pocket? He also could imbue one song, “So Long, Farewell,” with three distinct moods: The playful performance at the ball, the tense staging at the festival and, in instrumental form, the thrilling and suspenseful escape. Here he also uses the “When the dog bites, when the bee stings” cadence from “My Favorite Things” as an ominous interjection.

Perhaps the most striking counterpoint construction is in the two pieces, both dubbed “Nocturne,” that accompany the back-to-back scenes involving the captain and the women he’s torn between. The first, which underscores the balcony scene with the baroness, includes strains from “My Favorite Things, “The Sound of Music” and “Edelweiss.” The same tunes interplay in the second version, as he meets Maria in the gazebo.

But now we also pick up hints of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” “Something Good” and, most significantly, echoes of “The Laendler,” an artful allusion to that portentous dance back in Act I. The addition of three melodies that are distinctly about Maria and the captain makes an unmistakable statement.

For Sound of Music aficionados, this is the deep dive you didn’t know you needed. Without the dialogue (the only spoken words are Maria’s instructions to the children during “Do-Re-Mi”), listeners can appreciate the interplay of the time-tested melodies in a whole new way. And once the film-score presentation ends, there are interviews with Rodgers, director Robert Wise and actress Charmian Carr, who played eldest daughter Liesl, to add context.

If you’re missing Oscar Hammerstein’s lyrics, the third CD offers the familiar lineup of the original soundtrack album, which has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide on its own, as well as four alternate tracks.

The fourth disc is given over completely to instrumentals and alternate versions, including the title song above. It features three tracks of Christopher Plummer’s own singing, including an early take of “Edelweiss” in which he lacks breath support and clips the ends of phrases. (He was eventually dubbed by soundalike Bill Lee.) Plummer gave it a game try, but even he acknowledged that his voice suffered next to Julie Andrews’ crystalline pipes.

As Rodgers says in one of his interviews: When Andrews’ Maria sings the title song in the mountains, “It’s awfully hard for the audience to disassociate itself from the story, the music, the people from that moment on.”

The fifth disc, in the Blu-ray Audio format, will be the top prize for fans of surround sound. (Playback for full enjoyment requires a Blu-ray player and a home-theater or audio system with at least 5.1 channels.) It presents the original soundtrack album in a Dolby Atmos mix that is truly stunning and breathes new life into these decades-old recordings. The presentation starts timidly, with a quite wind whispering through the Austrian alps and somewhat constricted audio as Andrews breaks into “The hills are alive with the sound of music.” Enveloping sound truly kicks in with the ensuing “Preludium (Dixit Dominus)” and “Morning Hymn and Alleluia,” which place the listener smack-dab in the abbey’s resonant chambers. Orchestral passages gain a stronger presence with discrete placement in the rear channels.

For audio purists, Disc 5 also includes high-resolution stereo of the full film-score presentation from the first two discs.

As if all of the above weren’t enough for devotees of physical media, all five discs are housed in a 64-page, album-sized book that’s packed with rare production and behind-the-scenes photos. Film historian Mike Matessino, who remixed and remastered the audio, delivers insightful liner notes that appropriately focus on the iconic music.

Like the film itself, this essential Super Deluxe Edition of The Sound of Music will provide hours of enjoyment for any fan.