Barbra Streisand

Streisand sounds terrific on this keepsake of last fall’s U.S. tour, but perhaps the most beautiful noise preserved here is the crowd’s delirious roar.

Certainly it’s beautiful to Streisand, who warms to it and plays around with it — going so far as to make a couple of in-on-the-joke references to Mike Myers’ ultimate-fan creation, Linda Richman.

The double-CD concert recording samples broadly from Streisand’s five decades in show business. Her singing, throughout, is almost tactile, suggesting the luxurious smoothness of satin or the sweet kiss of a breeze on a summer day. An orchestra of 58 lushly accompanies her.

Signature songs — “The Way We Were,” “Evergreen,” “People” — are featured, but the true delights are the unexpected ones: the slinky, jazzy version of “Down With Love,” the free and easy stroll through “Come Rain or Come Shine” and the languorously calm, then giddily exuberant rendition of “A Cockeyed Optimist.”

Some song pairings are also intriguing: a “Funny Girl” section that includes such lesser-sung treats as the title song and “The Music That Makes Me Dance”; a message-moment mash-up of “Carefully Taught” and “Children Will Listen”; and the two-sides-of-love juxtaposition of the prickly, complicated “Unusual Way” and the quiet assurance of “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?”

The tracks have been culled from concerts in New York; Washington, D.C.; and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The tour’s notorious use of a Bush imitator is, mercifully, nowhere in evidence. Too bad the same can’t be said of the thick, gummy backup provided, now and again, by that boy band of classical singing known as Il Divo.

— Daryl H. Miller

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