When you are at the show, you can judge whether or not the music fits that moment in the story, whether or not it fits the mood of the dialogue, how it fits the character, how the song advances the story and that sort of thing. It's a different kind of evaluation from hearing the CD at home. The score is ultimately prepared to be heard with the musical, and not just for the cast recording CD, and I think hearing it in the context of the whole musical is the only adequate way to judge a score. Even if you're judging only the score, it can come across differently in context. I've seen only a tiny number of musicals, but when I saw a revival of West Side Story, some of the music that I had thought was the most boring stuff on the cast recording was the most powerful stuff in the score when I saw the musical.
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