Intrada Soundtrack Forum

9/17/2016

It’s here! Years in the making! Casts of thousands! Biggest undertaking in our history! Well, something like this anyway. A lot of hands put in a lot of years to make this release of The Ten Commandments possible: Paramount, Universal Music Group, MGM, Intrada. Six CDs, three premiering the entire original two and a half hour soundtrack for the first time ever - much of it in stereo, also for the first time ever! Every cue appears, including all of the myriad fanfares, processions, court dances, authentic shofars (eight of them!), percussion tracks, harp sequences, Theremin and Novachord overlays… everything right down to the tiniest tiple, a rare member of the guitar family. All of Elmer Bernstein’s magnificent and justifiably famous masterpiece intact and uncut including the premiere of numerous sequences edited from the finished film! And after the complete score, another 40 minutes of never-before-heard alternates and unused music! Trailer cues! And if all of this doesn’t make the first three CDs ample proof of Bernstein’s genius, enjoy Bernstein himself introducing and playing his major themes in an ultra-rare, recently unearthed 12-minute piano demo prepared for Cecil B. Demille at the start of the scoring process!

CD 4 presents the original one hour soundtrack as released by Dot Records in mono in 1957, CD 5 gives you the then-newly re-recorded 1960 album issued by Dot to meet the growing demand for a stereo performance - this version being newly conducted by Bernstein to closely approximate the original 1957 album - while CD 6 offers the CD premiere of the 1966 United Artists stereo album recorded by Bernstein using new arrangements made by his long-time orchestrators Leo Shuken and Jack Hayes… all of the above three discs are presented from the original album master tapes vaulted in pristine condition in various archives. Re-productions of the original cover designs, a lavishly illustrated 60-page booklet, authoritative notes about the production and score including session dates on the various releases, musician rosters, cue assemblies, pre-production artwork and more are all packaged inside a handsome deluxe slipcase!

Yes, fans of those glorious epic-era “roadshow” movies with their majestic and opulent scores and even just plain ordinary music lovers of all types - now you can rejoice. Elmer Bernstein's complete soundtrack arrives this coming Tuesday, September 20th!

The Ten Commandments

“So let it be written… so let it be done!”