Miss Saigon
A few notes for those as-yet unconvinced by Boublil & Schoenberg's 3rd show...
I recommend getting both 2-CD sets; choosing just one is more difficult. The "Complete Recording" has newer, more lush orchestrations, but the vocals aren't as good overall. The "Original London Cast" includes Lea Salonga and Jonathan Pryce, so here you get excellent voices but more plain music. Also, there are a few differences in the tracks: the complete recording has a few key moments left out of the OLC recording, but the OLC has a different "pheonix rising from the ashes" ending and the old lyrics "It's Her or Me" instead of "Now That I've Seen Her".
For Les Miz nostalgia, check out track 12 on disc 1 ("Thuy's Arrival"): the Thuy/Chris/Kim confrontation scene is closely based on the "Look Down" theme (01:01), with several measures in the relative major key. The stepwise ascent to the minor mediant / major key tonic is especially exciting (01:11).
My favorite affective moment in the score is the duet "Please" between Kim and John on disc 2, track 5. In particular, John's emotional lyric "they don't say in the files there's a woman in love here" (01:54) induces shivers while summarizing the main theme of act two.
Another high point is Chris's "Why God Why?" reprise on disc 2, track 10 ("The Confrontation", 01:33), which employs the extremely effective Boublil/Schoenberg figure-ground reversal trick also found in several places in Les Miz and Martin Guerre. The orchestra begins playing the main theme, but the vocal doesn't join in; instead, Chris sings a new melody in counterpoint to the original theme (2:02). As in the other shows, this recalls the content of the lyrics earlier in the show as a sort of flashback to earlier events in the storyline (here Chris is explicitly singing about the past so the device clearly has semantic import). Interestingly, after the main melody of the song is complete, Chris and Ellen continue singing a duet in the coda (03:12), to a tune that was played in a purely orchestral coda in the version in the first act.
The violin part in "I'd Give my Life for You" (disc 1, track 20) is especially good on this recording; there is a nice retardation (in the non-harmonic tone sense) at the subito piano (2:33), right at the start of the "then by my side, the proof I see; his little one, gods of the sun, bring him to me" lyric; follow along with the violins during the whole passage leading up to that point.