I came upon this totally by accident, looking for a video of Tom Paxton’s “My Favorite Spring” and scrolling through YouTube brought up other songs with “Spring” in their titles.  And one was a superb rendition by Mandy Patinkin of “Younger Than Springtime” for a 1986 “all star” concert recording of South Pacific with the London Symphony Orchestra.  It wasn’t just that his performance of the song was so wonderful, but also watching his efforts performing it were so notable.
 
But as I was set to use that video here, I noticed another video of the same performance but extended.  It comes from a TV documentary on the making of the album.  And the interview that Patinkin gives about his nervousness for such things and the additional preparation we see are fascinating and add much depth.  A couple of things to point out:  first, when we first see him singing with the orchestra, those are not for the recording, but rehearsals.  The official performance is done later in the video, standing at the back of the orchestra in a sound-proof booth.  And second, the conductor here is Jonathan Tunick, the long-time music director for Stephen Sondheim, with whom Patinkin worked often, so clearly he (Tunick) and Patinkin know how to best work with one another.
 
By the way, Patinkin clearly has a long career performing live on Broadway, and also doing his one-man solo act (which I saw him perform at the Ravinia Music Festival, where he was utterly ingratiating interacting with the audience – at one point leaving the stage and running to open a side door where he went outside to sign a number to the overflow crowd on the lawn), so that wouldn’t seem to be a source of his nerves.  From what he says here, it seems like that mostly comes (for whatever reason) from these “concert productions.”
 
There are subtitles on this video – I don’t know the language, but they appear to be Swedish or Dutch – and they’re a bit distracting, but eventually easy enough to ignore.

Continuing our gaggle of lesser-known love songs, we now have a fun song, "Love is the Reason" from the 1951 musical A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, with a score by Arthur Schwartz and the wonderful Dorothy Fields.  It's performed by the also-wonderful Shirley Booth.
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​And we'll add in another song, the comedy number "I Love You," this from Little Me, a show that got 10 Tony nominations in 1962, including one for Sid Caesar as Best Actor who played eight different roles in the show and sings the number here, along with Virginia Martin.  The score is by Cy Coleman and lyricist Carolyn Leigh (who wrote several of the lyrics in Peter Pan).

Once again, we offer up a bouquet of lesser-known love songs and even some comedy just for the occasion. To start off, here are two of the most beautiful that I know -- but particularly from musicals, which has more than its share of love songs.

This first is probably my favorite of the two, "When Did I Fall in Love?" from Fiorello! with a score by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and also Tony Award for Best Musical (tying, of all things, that year with The Sound of Music).  What I most admire about the song is the simplicity of the words, almost conversational, yet that bring out rich emotion.

Usually when I've posted this in the past, I've used the Original Cast Recording, which is wonderful.  But I just found a new version last year which is terrific.  As it happens, it's from a live production of the musical, done in 2013 at the New York City Center Encores!, which annually has put on pared-down productions for brief runs of lesser-known, deserving shows.  (Fiorello! was the first revival they ever presented -- and became the first they ever repeated for their 10th anniversary.)  It's performed here by Kate Baldwin, who knows a thing or two about how to sing Harnick, having released an album of his songs.  She soars here.
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The other, a very close runner-up, is "I Know Now" from the 1964 British musical Robert & Elizabeth, about the poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  In many ways, this is the opposite of "When Did I Fall in Love?", being very poetic (befitting its two main characters) and lush.  The show had a score by Ron Grainer and Ronald Millar.  It's performed by Keith Michell and June Bronhill.  The treat here is that they recreated the number seven years later for a 1971 television special, so we have video of it. 

By the way, some may recognize Keith Michell's name.  He most-famously played the lead in the PBS Masterpiece Theatre mini-series, The Six Wives of Henry VIII.  And also had a recurring role as insurance investigator (and former jewel thief) 'Dennis Stanton' on Murder, She Wrote.  He also had the lead in the London West End production of Man of La Mancha.  June Bronhill was an Australian opera singer who also performed in several musicals, including as 'Maria' in the original Australian production of The Sound of Music.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the stage production in London’s West End that was adaptation of Leslie Bricusse’s movie musical Scrooge – and which starred his longtime writing partner Anthony Newley in the title role.  And surprisingly came across a BBC Radio recording of the entire production done live on tour with an audience, which I posted here.

What I also came across was an impressively-detailed TV documentary on the making of the stage show as it prepared for the West End after having toured England for four years.  What’s so worthwhile about the 24-minute documentary is that it includes a bit of video footage of Newley performing in the role.  It also gives an excellent view of the massive work required to put on any stage show, especially a musical.

The other song, "Look for Small Pleasures," is quite nice, in a small, charming way.  In fact, it even had a bit of life outside the show and was recorded by several people, with moderate success.  ​

​And of course we have to follow that up with something from 1776, with music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards.  So, here then is "The Egg."

A week or so ago, I posted a video of Hugh Grant making a speech to help honor screenwriter and director Richard Curtis at the Motion Picture ceremony presenting him with an honorary Oscar.  In his speech, Grant noted that Curtis was one of he founders of Comic Relief and its off-shoot Red Nose Day – which makes this video all the more pointed, since it comes from the 2010 Comic Relief.
 
This is a 12-minute film that’s a parody of the movie Mamma Mia, starring Jennifer Saunders playing Meryl Streep.  And it features a  wonderful cast, including Sienna Miller as ‘Amanda Seyfried,’ Dawn French as “Julie Walter,” British comedian Alan Carr as ‘Colin Firth’ and Joanna Lumley recreating her role of ‘Patsy’ from Absolutely Fabulous (for no apparent reason).  The whole thing is utterly loony and a lot of fun.