Theatre is the ultimate musical melting pot; classical music can be seen to sit firmly at its root.

From the ballad operas of John Gay and JC Pepusch to the singspiele of Mozart, to the operettas of Lehár and then to the romantic shows of Sigmund Romberg and Rudolf Friml on Broadway: there’s a clear family tree to the modern musical. Classical music arguably gave birth to musical theatre. Are these really two different worlds?

Many classical musicians have themselves penned musicals; Fritz Kreisler wrote several operettas and revues for Broadway, whilst Vladimir Dukelsky was writing a piano concerto and ballets for Diaghilev whilst simultaneously penning showtunes like April In Paris under the pseudonym Vernon Duke. Frederick Loewe (of My Fair Lady fame) started as a concert pianist in his teens, and was the son of the performer who originated the role of Prince Danilo in The Merry Widow. Then there are the numerous musicals that have taken classical composers or compositions as their subjects: Romberg’s Blossom Time (1921) tells a fantasised version of Schubert’s love life; Oscar Hammerstein II’s Carmen Jones (1943) transplants the story of Bizet’s Carmen to Second World War America; George Forrest and Robert Wright added lyrics to melodies from Grieg (Song of Norway, 1944), Borodin (Kismet, 1953) and Rachmaninov (Anya, 1965).

Hal Prince directed both The Phantom Of The Opera and Don Giovanni. Prince believed these forms were two sides to the same coin; in 1979, he told The San Francisco Examiner: 'to me, opera is and always has been musical theatre of its time in a form with limited dialogue. Puccini and Verdi were the pop composers of their era … those operas were the showbiz musicals of their times.'

There are differences, not least in the style of performance – and beyond issues of amplification and voice types. Richard Rodgers said that 'in opera, you sing the music, but in musicals, you sing the words.' Opera is arguably about revelling in the power and beauty of the human voice, whereas a musical is (at least post-Rodgers and Hammerstein) all about the story, the words, the action; the music is defined by the text. I know this is a vast generalisation, but it’s one reason why musicals speak to me more powerfully than many operas; at the end of the Mad Scene in Lucia Di Lammermoor, Donizetti uses a jolly, anodyne melody to set words about sprinkling tears over a corpse, so incongruous to the meaning of the words. Indeed, there are many cringeworthy libretti in opera – but it’s hard to hide with a bad script in a musical … The difference between musicals and certain operas, then, can be a question of emphasis.

I’ve spent the last 18 months writing a musical, with classical music at its heart. It’s not so different to the process of writing an orchestral commission; both are large-scale works that spin stretches of music from comparatively compact themes and ideas. Therefore, both require that macro-scale thinking as a composer, always keeping in mind an arc and progression, an awareness of climaxes and direction. These aren’t two entirely separate worlds. Indeed, interviewing for my radio show, I’m often struck by how classical composers speak in visual or dramatic terms, discussing a concert piece as a narrative, a picture or an argument; likewise, theatre writers speak to me about the theoretical, the structural, the thematic development and more. 

Ultimately, ‘musical theatre’ is a catch-all term that is a tradition of storytelling: a way of holding an audience from start to end, and giving them something to both enjoy and to think about. A tradition classical music itself knows all too well.

Following the 2021 TONY Awards and to mark the return of live theatre to our stages, here’s a playlist that reflects on that blurred line between musicals and classical – from show composers writing symphonies, to classical stars reimagining showtune favourites. Curtain up!

Noël Coward – If You Could Only Come With Me (Bitter Sweet)

Coward: The Noël Coward Songbook – Ian Bostridge ten, Jeffrey Tate pf (Warner Classics)

It was Strauss II who inspired this show. In 1928, Noël Coward had been staying with friends in Surrey when his host decided to put on a record of Die Fledermaus. Driving home, Coward’s mind was awash with sweeping waltzes and he was immediately lit with the ambition to bring such romance to the West End stage. Under a tree on Wimbledon Common, he devised Bitter Sweet – one of several homages to the romanticism of a previous era, a nod to classical heritage at a time when big, brassy American musical comedies were fast becoming all the rage.

In this surprising album, Ian Bostridge brings a classical sensibility to songs so often associated with the clipped and crisp style of Coward. In doing so, this reveals a heartfelt lyricism and, sometimes, a biting pain at their core; Jeffrey Tate’s haunting piano accompaniment in this particular number certainly hints at the bitter as well as the sweet. We forget that Coward created shows that deal with drug addiction, conflict and death; this album shows that, far from the self-created image of the debonair, dilettante aristocrat, Coward was a man of depth. With his comedy play Blithe Spirit now playing in London, and a major new exhibition showing at the Guildhall Art Gallery, this album adds further fuel to the thought that this creative polymath is crying out for a second look.

Stephen Sondheim (arr. William Bolcom) – A Little Night Fughetta

Liaisons: Re-Imagining Sondheim From The Piano – Anthony De Mare pf (ECM New Series)

Beyond the Mozart reference of its title, Sondheim’s musical A Little Night Music brought a classical awareness to its very structure; Sondheim conceived the score with fughettos, contrapuntal duets and waltzes in mind, all in three-quarter time and variants of.

Classical music runs deep in Sondheim’s veins, having studied with Milton Babbitt and together analysed Jerome Kern songs as others would a Beethoven symphony (they studied the latter exhaustively, too). Sondheim has said that such lessons taught him the importance of long-line composing, where a musical idea is sustained over time; this ability to weave a complex thread from a defined beginning is common to both the giant structure of a symphony and that of a well-crafted musical.

It is the long-line potential of Sondheim’s pieces that form the basis of this album, which is in effect a series of variations and arrangements on a theme of Sondheim. Classic Sondheim numbers are arranged by musicians from eclectic disciplines, from Mark-Anthony Turnage to Jason Robert Brown, from Thomas Newman to Wynton Marsalis. In doing so, we get as much a sense of the arranger as we do the original composer. The results are complex and striking concert pieces that frequently diverge from the tone and spirit of the original.

Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin – My Ship (Lady In The Dark)

Kurt Weill: From Berlin To Broadway – Center City Brass Quintet (Chandos)

Weill’s theatrical ambition was positively Wagnerian, seeking to integrate music, spoken narrative and drama; he was truly a composer and not a songwriter, transforming a leitmotif to create a genuine score rather than simply a collection of songs. In doing so, Weill brought a heightened sophistication to Broadway; his The Firebrand Of Florence opens with a ground-breaking twenty minutes of continuous music, incorporating everything from recitative to dance.

For anyone doubting Weill’s ability to write a good old-fashioned standalone number, though, this sunshine-filled album will prove them wrong. It gives a glimpse of the standout pieces from his shows; whilst not fully illuminating the complexity and range of Weill’s writing, it is more than enough to provide a handy starting point to explore a broad career. Weill was rarely a man to repeat himself.

Kay Swift – Overture (Fine And Dandy)

World Premiere Recording – Studio Musicians / Aaron Gandy (P.S. Classics)

Kay Swift is perhaps most familiar today for her relationship with George Gershwin; she was his musical confidant and sometime-lover. Swift played a significant role in widening Gershwin’s classical appreciation, having herself enjoyed a long-running routine of writing a fugue a week. She had, after all, come via what is now the Juilliard School and the New England Conservatory. Swift helped Gershwin in his concert works, whilst he in turn introduced her to Broadway.

As a result, Swift soon made history as one of the few women songwriters in Tin Pan Alley, and wrote the musical Fine And Dandy alongside her husband in 1930. This overture combines a rambunctious opening theme with tender, lyrical string sections – but, rather like in Gershwin’s music, the fun wins out in the end.

Will Marion Cook – Overture (In Dahomey)

Black Manhattan: Theater and Dance Music of James Reese Europe, Will Marion Cook, and Members of the Legendary Clef Club – Paragon Ragtime Orchestra / Rick Benjamin (Cond)

A student of Joseph Joachim, Cook originally harboured ambitions to be a concert violinist. He played at Carnegie Hall, until systemic racism in critical notices led him to (literally) smash his violin to bits. From this, Cook came to Broadway, writing musical revues with all-black casts.

At a time when musical theatre and classical music are both evaluating their progress (or lack of) in representing diverse communities, this album speaks even more powerfully. It showcases works by such little-vaunted writers as Ziegfeld Follies arranger Will Vodery and the so-called 'Martin Luther King of music', James Reese Europe.

Marvin Hamlisch (arr. S Sorensen) – One (A Chorus Line)

Pure Imagination: Great Songs From The Stage And Screen – Richard Glazier pf (Centaur)

Coming to the Curve Leicester this Christmas – one of the celebrated musicals about life in musicals. Yet Marvin Hamlisch was originally set to become a classical concert pianist. He made history as the-then youngest-ever student to be admitted to the Juilliard School… aged seven. He studied there until the age of 20, in his words 'becoming proficient at playing Bach and Beethoven, hoping all along that I’d spend most of my life playing Hamlisch.' Long after winning multiple Oscars, Hamlisch continued to be haunted by the fear that he had not lived up to his talent, and that he should have written a concerto.

In his music to A Chorus Line, Hamlisch seems to show his classical background; the music is frequently rhapsodic, reflecting the stream-of-consciousness outpourings of its characters. In One, the harmonic twists and turns keep it ever-fresh, not least with its surprising tritone leap between the first two chords in the verse. In this arrangement for piano, we are taken back to Hamlisch’s roots. Perhaps Beethoven helped after all.

Victor Herbert – Cello Concerto No 2 in E Minor, Third Movement

Victor Herbert: Cello Concertos – Lynn Harrell (Clo) / Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields / Neville Marriner (Decca)

On to another musician famed for writing shows, but who began life as a classical performer. Victor Herbert was originally a cellist at the Stuttgart Royal Opera, but came to America after his singer wife was engaged for a season at the Metropolitan Opera. Within a year, Herbert was playing solo cello alongside the New York Symphony Orchestra, and became Principal Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony. However, despite such accomplishments, Herbert was clear about his ultimate ambition; he told his wife 'I must write for the theatre'. By his death in 1924, Herbert had written the music for 49 shows, including such hits as Babes In Toyland (1903) and The Red Mill (1906).

It’s appropriate, then, to remind ourselves of where it all came from – with Herbert’s instrument of choice, and the two Romantic-tinged concerti he penned for it.

Meredith Willson – Symphony No 1 in F Minor, ‘A Symphony Of San Francisco’, Third Movement

Moscow Symphony Orchestra / William T. Stromberg (Naxos)

Meredith Willson is best known for writing the book, music and lyrics of The Music Man (1957), a musical that was inspired by the Iowa of his youth and ran on Broadway for a whopping 1,375 performances.

Less known is the fact that Willson was also a flute player who had performed in John Philip Sousa’s Band and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. In this Naxos album, we hear that symphonic side; it’s a romantic, lyrical and colourful orchestral romp, full of spotlight moments on the woodwind section in which he grew up.

Claude-Michel Schönberg – Cleopatra’s Death (Cleopatra: The Ballet)

Northern Ballet Sinfonia / John Pryce-Jones (First Night Records)

 As Les Misérables returns to London’s Sondheim Theatre, its composer can be found here in a different (though similarly dramatic) guise. Claude-Michel Schönberg wrote a ballet score around Wuthering Heights, which was performed to acclaim in the UK in 2002. This was followed by Cleopatra, staged by Northern Ballet in 2011.

It charts the rise and fall of Cleopatra, with a dash of scandalous romance for good measure. It therefore has all the drama of a musical; the ambition, the danger, the love and the loss. The opening phrase of this final segment shoots up high, but later gives way to bubbling tremolando strings and harp arpeggios – suggesting peace is found by the end.

Andrew Lloyd Webber – The Phantom Of The Opera Symphonic Suite (Part 2)

Andrew Lloyd Webber Symphonic Suites - Andrew Lloyd Webber Orchestra / Simon Lee (Decca)

A musical set in an opera house cries out for lush romantic melodies and sweeping, rich orchestration; I’m always astonished to think that Lloyd Webber originally intended only to produce The Phantom Of The Opera, staging it with real, pre-existing operatic excerpts. Thankfully for musical theatre history, he soon realised the romantic heart of the piece and wrote his own melodies instead. Having made sketches for a musical about the rivalry between Puccini and Leoncavallo – and being a lifelong Puccini fan – Lloyd Webber was able to channel his love of opera. He pastiches many styles of operatic history, from the grand opera style of Meyerbeer (cue a huge elephant to enter Her Majesty’s Theatre) to the more dissonant language of Richard Strauss (mimicked in the Phantom’s own opera, which he forces the other characters to perform in Act Two). This musical is a glorious survey of operatic traits from across the ages, hyperbolic and hyper-romantic (exactly what this story requires) - with more than a little playful nudge at opera’s more ridiculous qualities.

This album is released on the 29^th October, and sees an 81-piece orchestra take to the stage of the newly-restored Theatre Royal Drury Lane. It presents three newly-orchestrated suites from Phantom, Evita and Sunset Boulevard, with Lloyd Webber’s long-time collaborator Simon Lee on the podium. With Phantom celebrating 35 years in the West End in October, this is a suitably lush toast.

Stephen Schwartz – Ouverture (Schikaneder)

Original Cast Album Wien – Orchester der Vereinigten Bühnen Wien

With The Prince Of Egypt back in the West End, I had to include something from Stephen Schwartz. On my Scala Radio show, he shared that Bernstein’s Overture to Candide was one of the earliest pieces that caught his ear; a few years later, he would collaborate with Bernstein on the latter’s Mass. Like Bernstein, Schwartz has blurred lines between musicals and opera; he was commissioned to write his first opera in 2009, with Séance since receiving a New York City Opera production in 2011.

This musical takes us into the world of opera. It’s one of Schwartz’s lesser-known pieces, produced in Austria in 2016 and 2017: a musical about Mozart’s friend and collaborator, Emanuel Schikaneder. The score was described as 'Kiss Me Kate meets Amadeus'; it certainly drew on sizeable forces, with an orchestra of thirty-five. In the overture, the sound is more Mozart than Schwartz; in the songs that follow, there’s a striking mixture of the two. For those who think of Schwartz and imagine Wicked and Godspell, this will be a handy reminder that his is an eclectic and often-surprising voice.

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein (arr. Stephen Hough) – The Sound Of Music: My Favourite Things

The Piano Album – Stephen Hough pf (Erato)

Rodgers and Hammerstein were no strangers to classical music. The Metropolitan Opera invited them to pen a new work inspired by Moby Dick (they turned it down); one of Rodgers’s proudest achievements was conducting the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a concert of his own work in 1954. He longed to be recognised as a ‘serious’ composer – as if writing some of the century’s most definitive shows wasn’t ‘serious’ enough.

In this glittering arrangement from Stephen Hough, Rodgers’s melody gets the full treatment, and then some – a virtuosic version full of darting countermelodies, disorientating syncopation and biting chromaticism. It’s like Liszt, Thalberg and Vladimir De Pachmann have all been thrown into a musical blender, with Rodgers the emulsifier. The result reveals the huge harmonic possibilities so often found in Rodgers’s music; where many writers would plonk down a plain old tonic and dominant chord, Rodgers so often added a biting diminished chord or other dissonance. This arrangement certainly shows him in full harmonic splendour. As we discover both on record and at live performances once again – there’s nothing that rivals the sound of music.

Jack Pepper is a composer, broadcaster and writer. He spent his teenage years writing for orchestras across the UK, and is currently writing a new musical. He is a presenter on Scala Radio, an Ambassador for Music For Youth, and has recently been announced as a new member of the UK Council for Creative UK (Creative Industries Federation and Creative England). To enjoy a previous playlist by him, see Blurred Lines: a playlist of musical meeting points