Track Listing
1. Uncertain Future (Main Title)
2. Shelby & Percy
3. Hannah's Fall
4. Mystery of Night, The
5. Open for Business
6. Remembering Eli
7. Trees, The
8. Gift from the Forest, A
9. Reading the Letters
10. Healing Balm, A
11. New Life for Gilead, A
12. Wrongful Blame
13. Desperate Decision, A
14. Care of the Spitfire Grill

Original score written by James Horner.

Audio Mixer: Shawn Murphy.

Recording information: Todd-AO Scoring Stage, Studio City, CA.

The soundtrack to the popular independent film The Spitfire Grill contains James Horner's subtle, moving score that works as an individual piece of music, not just as pleasant sonic wallpaper. It's a lovely score and one that proves that Horner, who has also written the music for Braveheart, Field of Dreams, and Alien, is one of the finest film composers of his era. ~ Rodney Batdorf

Recorded in: Studio 7, New Broadcasting House, Manchester 16 & 17 May 2002 Producer(s) Brian Pidgeon Mike George Sound Engineer(s) Stephen Rinker

Original score composed by James Horner.

It is amazing to think that Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, knighted in 1998 for his services to music has written so much music: orchestral works, quartets, concertos, symphonies, operas, ballets, songs, madrigals, jazz pieces and much more - all totalling over 600 items! He has scored over 50 films (including some documentaries in the earlier part of his career). This album comprises a fair cross-section.

Usually we only hear Bennett's celebrated waltz from Murder on the Orient Express so the eleven-minute suite from the 1974 Academy Award nominated score is most welcome. Gamba, aided by Chandos's superbly dynamic and detailed sound, gives a thrilling reading of this glittering, sophisticated music for the smart set travelling on a mission to kill, on Europe's premier train. The music reflects the styles of that hedonistic era between the two world wars: waltzes, tangos and music played in the salon style. There is, as to be expected, an element of murky mystery and swift violence; but there is appealing elegiac material too. But overall, there is the glamour and urgency of the great powerful train itself.

From international sophistication, the prograame turns to a smaller world of rural romantic tragedy and to John Schlesinger's 1967 film of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd starring Julie Christie, Peter Finch, Alan Bates and Terence Stamp. Although the film had mixed reviews, Bennett's score was Oscar-nominated. Bennett wrote some beguiling pastoral themes, notably the poignant Bathsheba love theme. Opposed to this delicacy, is some very astringent, harsh, dissonant folk-like material that underlies the cruel reality of rural life like the loss of the shepherd's (Bates) flock of sheep (they throw themselves over the edge of a cliff) leaving him penniless and unable to pursue his love, Bathsheba. There is also bravado music for the proud, womanising soldier (Stamp), counterbalanced with elegiac material and music that, in its sense of chill isolation, recalls Holst's Egdon Heath.

Bennett has arranged his music for the 1972 film Lady Caroline Lamb as an elegy for orchestra and that Cinderella of the orchestra, the viola. His music for this film, which was about Lady Caroline Lamb's disastrous obsessive love for the poet Lord Byron, is distinguished by a very appealing tender romantic melody that is redolent of the Lady's yearning. The work is presented in two movements. Before the love theme is stated in the first of these, there is headlong skittish, neurotic music portraying the rash, foolish woman. Afterwards comes some comically ironical military music of some pomposity which includes (Lady Lamb's?) sighs before the mood darkens - perhaps signifying Lady Lamb's encroaching madness. The second movement reprises the love music, which becomes the theme for a set of variations: some dreamily nocturnal, some passionate, some troubled. Philip Dukes is a sensitive and refined soloist.

Cynthia Miller adds an ethereal touch, playing her ondes martenot for Bennett's Enchanted April score. This 1991 Merchant Ivory production dealt with the lives and loves of a handful of English ladies spending an idyllic month in an Italian villa. Accordingly, Bennett responded with a mellow nostalgic score, in which the ondes martenot transports the characters, and us, away from the ordinary, everyday world - to somewhere that is extraordinary and enchanted. His music is very delicate, atmospheric and impressionistic; and very reminiscent of both Debussy and Ravel (Ravel in Chinoiserie mode). At one point this delicate fantasy is grounded by the strains of Elgar's Chanson de matin played on a cor anglais but the peaceful idyllic mood is soon reinstated. A lovely work that perhaps is too fragile for its 19-minute length.

The concert is completed by two shorter works: the Nicole's haunting theme from the 1985 TV production, Tender is the Night, although I would argue that this is not its premiere recording for I remember hearing it the soundtrack recording I purchased at that time. I would also argue that Nicole was rehabilitated by the man she married and it was the strain of that work which caused his destruction! The concluding item is the touching and plaintive love theme for Four Weddings and a Funeral that tended to be overshadowed by more familiar pop source music.

Gamba leads the BBC Philharmonic in committed, romantic performances. A delightful album and strongly recommended.

-- Ian Lace, MusicWeb International

Track Listing
1. Weep You No More Sad Fountains
2. Particular Sum, A
3. My Father's Favorite
4. Preying Penniless Woman
5. Devonshire
6. Not a Beau for Miles
7. All the Better for Her
8. Felicity
9. Patience
10. Grant Me an Interview
11. All the Delights of the Season
12. Steam Engine
13. Willoughby
14. Miss Grey
15. Excellent Notion
16. Leaving London
17. Combe Magna
18. To Die for Love
19. There Is Nothing Lost
20. Throw the Coins
21. Dreame, The

Personnel includes: Robert Ziegler (conductor); Jane Eaglen (vocals); Peter Manning (concertmaster); Jonathan Snowdon (flute); Richard Morgan (oboe); Robert Hill (clarinet); Tony Hymas (piano).

Recorded at Air Studios - Lyndhurst Hall, Lyndhurst, England. Includes liner notes by Ang Lee.

Personnel: Jonathan Snowden (flute); Robert Hill (clarinet); Richard Morgan (oboe); Tony Hymas (piano).

Liner Note Author: Ang Lee.

Recording information: Air Studios, Lyndhurst Hall, London, England.

Patrick Doyle began his career in film music writing scores for Kenneth Branagh's films -- but he didn't receive his first Oscar nomination until he wrote this one for Branagh's then-wife, Emma Thompson (whose magic touch with the Academy landed her almost annual nominations in the 1990s). Since then, Doyle seems to have joined the small group of score writers who get voted in year after year by the old boys' club that is the Academy's musical wing. However, this is not Doyle's best work -- most of it simply recycles melodic phrases from his previous stuff. Nonetheless, Sense and Sensibility has a pleasant romanticism in its orchestrations, and the vocal solos by renowned soprano Jane Eaglen are quite good. ~ Darryl Cater

A film score is inextricably linked with the image, it is composed according to the wishes of the director; sometimes it becomes a separate sphere of art. The beauty of the intertwined, overlapped melodic lines spun from dreams and longings and the depth of the harmonic structures occasionally introduce the listener into an unreal, irrational world, a world of illusion, dreams... I couldn't resist them - Maksym Rzeminski

The Vogtland Philharmonic, conducted by the music director Stefan Fraas, present their second album with next highlights from famous Hollywood film scores from the recent years, as well as popular classics of the genre film music. Appropriate for Hollywood film music it is presented in spectacular surround sound.

From West Side Story to the Simpsons, Barber' Adagio and music by John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith, this recording captures all the excitement of some of the most popular movie and television soundtracks, arranged for brass quintet.

After Things to Come, his most famous film score, Arthur Bliss composed the soundtrack scores of CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS and MEN OF TWO WORLDS, two dramatic pictures which are largely forgotten today. Their music, however, enlivened by Spanish and African rhythms respectively, is colourful and interesting enough to be revived in the form of concert suites. Men of Two Worlds contains BARAZA, a miniature concert piece for piano and orchestra (like Addinsell�s �Warsaw Concerto� from Dangerous Moonlight, Bax�s Oliver Twist, R�zsa�s Spellbound and Herrmann�s �Concerto Macabre� from Hangover Square), with additional male choir. The three orchestral pieces from SEVEN WAVES AWAY are another real discovery and if anything even more deserving of concert performances than the two earlier scores.

Music from Pirates of the Caribbean, the English Patient, Jurassic Park, Shakespeare in Love, Batman, the Pink Panther, Mission Impossible, Love Story, Superman, Romeo and Juliet, the Godfather, the French Lieutenant's Woman.

Classical Music

Hear the images; see the music. Here in a few words is what touches me in New Wave cinema (Godard, Truffaut, Malle, and Demy). How to bring together the music of these films into a single program? This disc was conceived as an image of what I love in these films. The musical themes were only very slightly arranged and were regarded as raw material, leaving room for respectful improvisation and thematic appropriation, while retaining the greatest uniting principle: freedom. - Stéphane Kerecki

There is to be a journey, not too far away, because, after all, it's nicest at home, isn't it? A journey for invited guests, offshore and onshore, by boat and by bus, and a few steps on foot. A journey full of surprises. A journey as a performance. A journey into the night... When looking for a word to best describe Harald Weiss' musical oeuvre, the most applicable certainly appears to be "cross-over". He has been honored with numerous prizes and awards for his artistic work: among others, the Rome Scholarship of the Villa Massimo, the Lower Saxony Scholarship for Film and Music, and a prize from the Premier TV station for his video clips.

RACHMANINOFF The Bells. 1 PROKOFIEV Alexander Nevsky 2 • Evgeny Svetlanov, cond; 1 Daniil Shtoda (ten); 1 Elena Prokina (sop); 1 Sergei Leiferkus (bs); 2 Alfreda Hodgson (mez); 1 BBC SO & Ch; 2 Philharmonia O & Ch • ICA ICAC 5069 (78:30) Live: London 1 4/19/2002, 2 1/30/1988


Sometimes, archive recordings have the air of, “Well, as long as we have access to it, let’s release it on CD.” Some of ICA Classics’s BBC discs have presented fairly unexceptional music-making, to say the least. Here, though, we have one absolutely fabulous performance ( The Bells ) and one very good one ( Alexander Nevsky ), and I would even give them preference over Svetlanov’s studio recordings of these same works.


With gorgeous live sound to boot, this version of The Bells really rings my chimes, so to speak. This is a work that stands or falls with the quality of the chorus. When I first auditioned this disc, I was unaware that I was not hearing a native Russian group; that’s how good the BBC Symphony Chorus is here. Furthermore, some recordings of this work content themselves with wimpy or emotionally anonymous soloists. Tenor Daniil Shtoda, on the other hand, displays brilliance of both sound and temperament, and the first movement, depicting the silver sleigh bells of youth, has great élan. Sergei Leiferkus is appropriately mournful in the funereal fourth movement; as with Shtoda, familiarity with the language and the style pays off. I am less impressed with soprano Elena Prokina, who is affected by what used to be called a “Slavic wobble,” but even she convinces this listener with the involvement of her singing. Svetlanov tended to get slower as he got older. Here, though, he never drags, and he points up the contrasts between the four movements with vivid color and attention to mood. The booklet note indicates that he looked frail on this occasion, and in fact, he died just a few weeks later. There’s nothing infirm about his conducting here, though.


The sound in Alexander Nevsky is more recessed and even a little muffled, although not fatally so. It doesn’t shoot the performance in the foot, but of course this is music that benefits from as much sonic realism as engineers, live or in the studio, can muster. Svetlanov is more introspective here. I get the feeling that he was trying to purge the score of its inherent vulgarity without cutting down on its excitement. If that was the case, he largely succeeded. The Philharmonia Chorus can’t hide its Englishness (for better or worse) and mezzo Alfreda Hodgson is rather maternal in her sixth-movement solo. Still, there is a lot to like here. In some ways, this is like André Previn’s EMI studio recording in its refusal to confuse weight with ponderousness, its avoidance of bombast, and its rather sensitive demeanor. (I recently discovered the Previn on an English EMI LP, and it immediately moved to the top of my list, so my comparing Svetlanov to Previn is meant as high praise.) It’s better than Svetlanov’s harshly recorded and only superficially exciting Soviet-era studio recording.


No sung texts are included, but do you really need them? The booklet note includes an interesting bit of trivia: As a child, Svetlanov appeared onstage in the role of Trouble in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly . He also made, according to annotator Colin Anderson’s reckoning, more than 3,000 recordings for Russian, Japanese, French, British, and Dutch companies. And you thought Neeme Järvi made a lot of CDs!


I’d get this if I were you.


FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle

This disc received the 1998 Cannes Classical Music Award for "Best 20th-Century Orchestral Recording." It was also nominated for the 1998 Grammy Award for "Best Engineered Album, Classical."

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There is much to savour here: the thrilling sense of spectacle engendered in the brazen Prelude to The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956); the sweep and lustre of the LAPO’s response in the two extended excerpts from Marnie (1964); the aural feast served up by the score rejected by Hitchcock for Torn Curtain (1966, whose characteristically unconventional instrumentation includes 16 horns, 12 flutes, nine trombones and two tubas). In the Suite from Psycho (1960) Salonen draws playing of terrific bite and menace from his Los Angeles string section. Most striking of all is the remarkable concentration this partnership brings to those pivotal slow numbers like “The Madhouse” and “The Swamp” (both of which convey such numbing dread through their indeterminate tonality). Salonen’s finely sculpted realization of the suite for strings, harp and percussion from Herrmann’s score to Francois Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 (1966) has a wistfulness (especially in the poignant bars of the concluding “The Road”) that rather scores over Joel McNeely’s recent Varese Sarabande version with the Seattle SO. How good, too, that room was found for Christopher Palmer’s effective synthesis of Herrmann’s very last composition, the magnificently sinister and moody score for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1975).

“Any grumbles at all?”, I hear you ask. Well, just a couple. In the overture to North by Northwest (1959) Salonen’s chosen tempo strikes me as just a little too hectic to give quite enough lift to those obsessive fandango rhythms, whereas Herrmann’s own soundtrack recording on EMI Premier conveys an altogether greater sense of menace. Salonen also tries to wring too much out of the gorgeous “Scene d’amour” from Vertigo (1958) – McNeely with the RSNO on Varese Sarabande is less self-consciously sticky and infinitely more moving as a result. Otherwise, I have nothing but praise.

A winner of a disc, in sum, resplendently played and engineered, and excellently annotated by Alex Ross. If this generous new Sony collection doesn’t succeed in alerting a whole new audience to the genius of Bernard Herrmann, then nothing will.

-- Gramophone [1/1997]

Released in July 1940, 'The Sea Hawk' was Korngold's last swashbuckler, and is arguably the finest film ever made in the genre. Certainly it is one of Errol Flynn's greatest films, and had a lavish budget for its time of 1.7m. One of the most difficult assignments of Korngold's career, it required a score of extraordinary length and complexity. The music was superbly multi-layered and thematically complex, literally sweeping the film along and matching its extraordinary visuals. Composition began just two days after the filming had been completed: in a special projection room equipped with a piano, Korngold had the reels of film run for him repeatedly while he improvised his music on the piano to the running footage. Later, he would then complete a full, annotated piano score. His training in the late symphonic traditions served him well. This recording has been very much a personal project for Rumon Gamba who comments, 'as with the rest of the Chandos Film series I very much wanted to keep the music limited to a single disc, instead of being dogged reconstruction of the complete score, including every single cue - some being just a quick trumpet figure or drum roll. I felt it was more important to represent the symphonic sweep of the score which is one of this film's greatest strengths'. Gamba has created a comprehensive 'suite' of six 'movements' that follows the action chronologically and only leaves out some insignificant cues and general repetitions. He continues, 'I believe that hearing Korngold's score in this manner will make for a wonderful listening experience representative of the narrative and in keeping with the spirit of this marvellous picture'. The BBC Philharmonic performs these scores with a symphonic precision and energy familiar with the first volume of Korngold's film music, released in 2005. Reviewing Volume 1, 'Music from the Movies' observed that 'Chandos has been doing great things in the film score re-recording world over recent years...With this release, however, they break new ground...this Chandos CD is for me the crowning achievement so far of what was already an impressive addition to the Golden Age film music'.

Chandos Movies is one of the best-known film-music based labels in the industry, and has received tremendous critical acclaim. The series is especially associated with the conductor Rumon Gamba, whose understanding of and enthusiasm for the genre is famous. Vaughan Williams' film music ranks amongst the very finest ever written, and this CD includes some of his best examples. This disc is especially important as some of the material has never been recorded before. The result is a hugely important release which will be of interest to both film music buffs and fans of Vaughan Williams.

Chandos' latest release in its film music series features the film music of Sir Arnold Bax. Comprising two of the composer's most important film scores, Oliver Twist and Malta, GC. This disc features the first complete Oliver Twist, in an edition specially compiled for this release. Both these works are rare in the catalogue. Recorded in: Studio 7, New Broadcasting House, Manchester 24 & 25 September 2002 Producer(s) Brian Pidgeon (Executive) Mike George (Recording) Sound Engineer(s) Stephen Rinker

Track Listing
1. As Time Goes By
2. One For My Baby
3. Everything I Do (I Do It For You)
4. Stella by Starlight
5. Windmills of My Mind
6. Crazy World
7. That Old Black Magic
8. Unchained Melody
9. Mona Lisa
10. Call Me Irresponsible
11. Two For the Road
12. It's All There
13. Summer Knows, The
14. Tender Is the Night
15. Charade

Clifton Parker was a prolific composer in the British film industry during the 1940s and 50s. Originally singled out by legendary music director Muir Matheson, he went on to enjoy a twenty-year career in the movies. Inexplicably, hsi work, distinctive for its lively, symphonic style, is little known today, despite having written the scores for a number of classic movies.

Now that Chandos, in its extensive and irreplaceable film music series, has dealt with composers from Vaughan Williams to Nino Rota who first made their reputations in the classical concert field, with Ron Goodwin (1925–2003), they pay tribute to a musician who, in the early 1950s, quickly emerged from the pop music world with such fetching instrumental novelties as Swingin’ Sweethearts (known as Lingering Lovers in England) and similar cute numbers that became briefly ubiquitous on both sides of the Atlantic. (Incidentally Chandos should have provided some background commentary on Goodwin’s evolution in the accompanying booklet.)

This program offers a wide-ranging cross section of Goodwin’s work on several successful films as well as a few obscure but very appealing themes from minor films. Opening with the main theme to a 1963 war adventure—633 Squadron—we recognize Goodwin’s knack for taking very simple motifs of a generically fanfare-like or tocsin-like nature—sometimes celebratory, at others minatory—and turning them into striking variants that stick firmly in the memory. The main theme from the top-drawer World War II thriller—Where Eagles Dare—is another excellent example of this exceptional skill of creating an imposing charge of tension and foreboding through a monothematic manipulation of a basic percussion-lanced idea. Operation Crossbow and Force Ten from Navarone also fall into this category.

But Goodwin had another puckish side to his chameleon-like personality: an ability to throw together a mélange of thematic snippets drawn from all kinds of easily recognizable and pigeonholed ethnic and nationalistic sources—as in the rollicking roundelays from Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and Monte Carlo or Bust. The Miss Marple theme exemplifies Goodwin’s ability to establish and enhance a uniquely quirky character in just a few measures similar to the late John Addison’s inimitable theme for Murder She Wrote. Some of Goodwin’s themes have such unusual appeal that they can be adapted to other collective uses, as in the case of the main theme from The Trap, a lesser film noir, which later became known as “The London Marathon Theme.” Goodwin’s facility with more lyrically romantic material is evident in Lancelot and Guinevere, Of Human Bondage, and Beauty and the Beast, while a suite from Clash of Loyalties exploits more-exotic terrain quite colorfully.

Finally, we have here for the first time anywhere some lovely and sensually expressive melodies, such as the main themes from Deadly Stranger, Whirlpool, and Submarine X-1. About the only examples here that come across as somewhat derivatively generic are the London Theme from Hitchcock’s Frenzy and the suite from Battle of Britain, for which the too-slow-writing William Walton was preparing a truly exciting score but was replaced at the last minute by the more facile Goodwin.

This inherently positive, cheerful, and good-humored music reflects the beloved Goodwin’s own personality and is given a rousing and thrilling send-off by Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic. A real treat for all lovers of “light.”

Paul A. Snook, FANFARE

Track Listing
1. House of Henry Jekyll, The - (opening credits, with London Symphony Orchestra)
2. Birth of Hyde, The - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
3. Announcement, The - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
4. Story of the Scars, The - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
5. Mary's Errand - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
6. Mrs. Farraday's - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
7. It Comes in Like the Tide - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
8. Mary Meets Hyde - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
9. Shopping Trip, The - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
10. Butler's Night Off - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
11. Haffinger's - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
12. Transformation, The - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
13. Mary Reilly - (end credits, with London Symphony Orchestra)

The London Symphony Orchestra includes: George Fenton (conductor); Lucia Lin, Janice Graham (leader, solo violin).

Recorded at CTS Studios and Abbey Road Studios, London, England.

Personnel: Lucia Lin, Janice Graham (violin).

Recording information: CTS Studios, London, England; EMI Abbey Road Studios, London, England.

George Fenton's score for the artsy horror film Mary Reilly is appropriately gothic and haunting, capturing the essence of the movie. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Classical Music

This fourth album from Neeme Jarvi and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande explores the music of Jacques Ibert. Although Ibert’s work is starkly contrasting from piece to piece, all of his compositions show his deftness with their strong melodic lines and vigorous ostinato patterns. These recordings were taken in Geneva’s Victoria Hall, and the outstanding acoustics are easily heard on this recording.

Review:

Järvi gives us a darker Divertissement than usual. The humor is mordant rather than breezy, the tone at times acerbic. But the shimmering Nocturne, with its poised piano solo, transports us into a sensual world more fully explored in Escales…, and the latter gets one of its finest performances on disc, superbly nuanced, and quite exquisitely played.

It’s the rest of the CD, though, that makes it special. The Suite symphonique, ‘Paris’ swerves garishly between the mechanism of Pacific 231 and the classiest of foxtrots and waltzes. The sad, haunting Sarabande pour Dulcinée comes from the soundtrack for George Pabst’s 1933 film Don Quichotte. Ibert was also a master of the pièce d’occasion, and Järvi includes the riotous Bacchanale and the grandiose Ouverture de fête.

Ibert emerges from it all as a fine composer, whose unity lies in his almost impudent diversity, and who is often far from frivolous as some have maintained. And the disc allows Järvi to show off his Swiss orchestra to perfection. Very fine.

– Gramophone

Alan Rawsthorne's music was the soundtrack to adventure. Between 1937 and 1964, he scored 27 films, most with a military or adventurer's theme. Bold brass and soaring strings characterize his vivid musical illustrations of conflict and courage.
His music has a larger than life quality, fitting perfectly with the big screen. The regal style originates from a time when movies were still magic and audiences regarded performances as major events. Rawsthorne captures the essence of drama on the epic scale required by the stories. Recorded in 1999 by Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic, this album improves upon the original soundtracks with superior sound quality.