If you are a music lover who despairs at the semiliterate doggerel that is the stuff of most popular song lyrics – and is equally dismayed by the rudimentary three-chord tunes that they are affixed to, you may be someone who yearns for the sophistication and inventiveness of the great musicals, from Cole Porter to Stephen Sondheim. Many people, of course, have a deep love for the genre, but their knowledge of the shows themselves is often based on incomplete and adulterated recordings. One man, a Chinese/British entrepreneur/producer by the name of John Yap has been working for years on a quiet musical revolution: as a recording producer of great energy and drive, he has made available complete recordings of many key shows on his own label, in which every note of the scores are given their full due. And if that were not enough, the original orchestrations of the shows – so much better than the more recent workaday jobs – are respected along with the composers’ other intentions. For his most recent project, Yap has been in touch with the greatest show composer of the modern era, Stephen Sondheim putting together the first ever complete recording of the composer’s cult musical Anyone Can Whistle.

But before that long-awaited Sondheim set appears – with the addition of much material that has not previously been recorded – listeners can relish such earlier Yap productions as his complete recording of the ENO take on Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures (with the English National Opera in vintage form), the first complete version of Ivor Novello’s The Dancing Years (with the great Valerie Masterson in a starring role) and – most cherishably — another first complete recording: Kurt Weill’s exquisite One Touch of Venus, which produced the haunting Weill classic Speak Low. Yap takes care to hire the best possible singers for his various recordings, and here the exquisite Melissa Ericco is the perfect advocate for the lyrical score.

But how did the enterprising John Yap’s journey begin? When and how did he inaugurate his series of complete recordings?

Yap writes: ‘From the very beginning, quality and pedigree were the main considerations for the catalogue that I was going to build. Because of my interest in and knowledge of the musical theatre recording world, I knew exactly what kind of recordings my catalogue would contain. I wasn’t interested in just recording some hit songs to make a quick sale to make a bit of money, I had a long term plan to create a catalogue of the most unique, important and the highest quality recordings in the annals of Musical Theatre.

‘I learned the important lesson that quality in recordings will last forever, that’s why for my Original Studio Cast Complete Recordings I always used Symphony Orchestras playing the Original Broadway/West End Orchestrations and featuring Stars from Broadway, West End, Films and Opera. Until my Complete Recordings came along, 99.9% of Musical Theatre Recordings were abridged and cut, often leaving as much as 40% of the scores unrecorded. From my appreciation of the Classical and Opera Recordings, I knew that those real lovers of the genre would always welcome Complete Recordings of such, instead of just Highlights of them. I wanted to elevate the appreciation of Musical Theatre Recordings to the level of the appreciation of Opera and Classical Recordings. This I succeeded in doing as well as building up an unrivalled unique catalogue of such Complete Recordings of Masterworks of the Musical Theatre. No doubt that these Complete Recordings will be the only such recordings in the World for the foreseeable future, if ever.

‘I realise, too, that having a catalogue of the most unique and important complete recordings is not enough for me to grow the Label and Business. I needed to have a simultaneous strategy of building a catalogue of commercial scores and songs. The catalogue contains recordings of practically every great Broadway Songs ever written. My recordings of Andrew Lloyd Webber songs is most probably the largest recorded collection amongst all the other Record Companies in the World excepting the Really Useful Music Company. Most of the Cast Albums of his shows were recorded by the Really Useful Music Company and licensed to various Labels to release. At the moment I own over 6,500 Master recordings of songs.

‘The Label was started in 1980 with a ‘live’ recording of the revue NASHVILLE, NEW YORK (Music by Kurt Weill and Vernon Duke, Lyrics by Ogden Nash) at The King’s Head Theatre. London. Even though this was a Fringe production, it is quite clear that the quality of the works is inherent and important to my choice of recordings, a standard that has endured to this day. In just under 40 years I have produced thousands of recordings, including works by Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein, Lerner and Loewe, Kander and Ebb, Kurt Weill, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Stephen Schwartz and virtually every significant Broadway and West End writers and composers. In addition to recording Original Broadway Cast, West End Cast, European Cast and Off-Broadway Cast albums, I have worked with and recorded productions by The Royal Opera House, The English National Opera, The D’Oyly Carte Opera, Scottish Opera, Opera North, The Royal Shakespeare Company, Chichester Festival Theatre and, in the USA, The Kennedy Center and The Lincoln Center Theatre. I have recorded many stars from the stage, opera, TV and movies. They include Liza Minnelli, Judi Dench, Jim Dale, Glenn Close, Richard Harris, Thomas Allen, Valerie Masterson, Chita Rivera, Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lee, Brian May (of Queen), Cleo Laine, Anthony Newley, Betty Buckley, Sarah Brightman, David Hyde Pierce, John Barrowman, Michael Ball, Elisabeth Welch, Willard White, Patti LuPone, John Houseman, Dora Bryan, Honor Blackman, Natalia Makarova, Julia Migenes, Brian Cox, Pat Suzuki, Ron Raines, Sian Phillips, Elaine Paige, Christian Borle and Carol Channing, among many others. I have a strong and happy relationship with The York Theatre that started in 2002 and together have recorded over 22 Original Cast albums, including CLOSER THAN EVER, THE MUSICAL OF MUSICALS, ENTER LAUGHING, LUCKY STIFF, SUMMER OF ’42, BUSKER ALLEY (WITH JIM DALE AND GLENN CLOSE), CHRISTMAS IN HELL, ROTHSCHILD & SONS and others. Some recent Recordings include Kurt Weill’s ONE TOUCH OF VENUS starring Melissa Errico, Ron Raines, Brent Barrett, Victoria Clark and Judy Kaye, Kander and Ebb’s THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS (both Off-Broadway and London Casts), SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS (Regent Park’s Theatre cast) Ivor Novello’s THE DANCING YEARS and the new John Kander and Greg Pierce musical THE LANDING with Original Off-Broadway Cast, Complete Recording on 2CDs. I am current preparing the releases of the first Complete Recording of Sondheim’s ANYONE CAN WHISTLE on 2CDs starring Maria Friedman, John Barrowman, Julia McKenzie and Arthur Laurents

The catalogue also has recordings of Operas, Film Soundtracks, Gilbert and Sullivan Operas, Classical and solo Albums by stars of Broadway and the West End and Australia and Jazz CDs featuring the likes of Elisabeth Welch, Adelaide Hall and Salena Jones. It is truly an International Label.’