This story has inspired many adaptations for screen and television, and yielded superb scores from the like of Jerome Moross and Bill Conti. This adaptation for American Playhouse (screened in 1986 in 4 parts, totalling 4 hours) is arguably the most faithful and least sanitized version. The bucolic score by William Perry has only been released in a 16 minute suite on a Naxos anthology: it deserves to be heard in a more extended form. The writing seems almost effortless but Perry's superb craft skills are on unfailing display. (He does for Huck what Wilfred Josephs did for SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS.)
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