Excellent Collection, Even Better Price I picked this CD up as an afterthought while searching for some background music for a play I was putting together, and while it cost less than half of the other swashbuckler soundtrack CDs, it has more tracks than most, more variety than any(dramatic to romantic to action), and solid sound quality. If you're after a whole collection of the Korngold era tunes in one CD, this is it.
An Oldie Re-Issue, But Still A Goodie! A re-issue of tracks from Marco Polo 8.223607, 1995. Practically perfect in every way. But the brass could be a bit more crisp and defined. Primarily an early work from master restoration magicians Messrs. John Morgan and William Stromberg. And now at "popular prices." Don't delay on this one!
William Flanigan, Ph.D.
Watch Out! This Music Will Raise Your Cholesterol! And it will buckle your swash, too.
These performances appeared in 1995 on Naxos's full-price sister label, Marco Polo, and are among a spate of movie music scores making their appearances now at budget price. Some are wonderful - like Honegger's score for 'Les Misérables,' Georges Auric's 'Beauty and the Beast,' and Wojciech Kilar's 'Dracula.' Some don't stand up too well on their own, like Steiner's 'King Kong' or Waxman's 'Objective: Burma!'. But this one definitely has the best of the best, all in that late-romantic, richly scored music we associate with the genre. The producers have put together some of the best cues from four swashbucklers and from beginning to end this is music to enjoy, with no dead wood anywhere along the way.
The Main Title of Miklós Rosza's 'The King's Thief' is a heckuva lot better than the 1955 Edmund Purdom movie for which it was written. Victor Young's 'Scaramouche' is represented by nine cues, among them the delightful 'Main Title' and the faux-baroque 'Pavane.' The inventor of this sort of movie music, Erich Maria Korngold, is here represented by six cues from the 1935 Errol Flynn blockbuster, 'Captain Blood.' All five cues are terrific and sweep you along, but I particularly like 'Slaves--Arabella and Blood,' a seven-minute tone poem of great beauty and ingenuity. Max Steiner, a transplanted Viennese like Korngold, contributes six cues from 'The Three Musketeers,' also from 1935. The love theme is really gorgeous.
These scores were reconstructed by the late Christopher Palmer ('The King's Thief'), William Stromberg ('Scaramouche') and John Morgan ('Captain Blood' and 'The Three Musketeers') from conductor's piano scores; the full scores, like many of their era, were lost. In one case the score had only a violin line. The three arrangers attempted, then, to reproduce the orchestrations from the movie sound track itself, a difficult task at best, but it sounds to me like they did a marvelous job collectively. These orchestrations have the sweep and grandeur of the originals.
The Brandenburg Philharmonic Orchestra (Potsdam, Germany) is conducted by Richard Kaufman. They are beautifully played and recorded.
This one is worth having if you love the flamboyant style favored in adventure films; this is the crème de la crème.
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