Barbra Streisand - Concert [Highlights] (CD)

All Music Guide

While an impressive live career retrospective and musical autobiography, The Concert also contained a lot of talking and a few lessthanterrific musical passages that made it the sort of album one was not likely to play repeatedly. With The Concert: Highlights, the original twodisc/cassette, containing 28 tracks and running 103:47, was condensed to a singledisc/cassette containing 20 tracks and running 77:51, for, of course, half the price. The result was actually an improvement: three of the eight excised tracks were portions of "Therapist Dialogue" and a fourth was the second act overture. No loss there. The four omitted songs were pleasant, but nonessential. In fact, one, an extended valentine to Streisand's godchild masquerading as a Disney film song medley, was better left off. Streisand completists will have to have the complete show, of course, but Highlights is more listenable in the way one listens to records more than once and focuses more on Streisand's singing. Obviously, ...the album was trimmed just enough to fit onto one disc. But it could have benefited by being edited even more. - William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide Read more Less