Intrada Soundtrack Forum

01/22/2023

Success! We’re back from Glasgow! And I’m already at work with the session masters, helmed by Mike Ross-Trevor, the extraordinary engineer we’ve had on our Excalibur team dating all the way back to our 1986 re-recording of Jerry Goldsmith’s Islands In The Stream, when we were still in our infancy. We had not yet given the Excalibur brand to our re-recordings, mainly because we had no idea that the series - or even our label - would ever survive. But it did! And now we have our new recordings of Bernard Herrmann’s The Man Who Knew Too Much and On Dangerous Ground “in the can” and ready for assembly. Some 90 players of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra brought these two truly classic Herrmann film scores to life, both under the peerless direction of William T. Stromberg. Mike Ross was also with us when we did Ivanhoe and Julius Caesar in London. And in particular, he gave us that crisp, clean sound for Jason And The Argonauts, our first Herrmann release, under the baton of our dear friend Bruce Broughton. So it be that we again went for the crisp and detailed sound that Herrmann’s music begs for… and we got it! The “Prologue” from The Man Who Knew Too Much is a powerhouse piece, led by Nathan Van Cleave’s “VistaVision” logo. And the action music for On Dangerous Ground is legendary amongst Herrmann aficionados, understandable given the virtuoso writing for the massive French horn section. Balance this with the haunting viola d’amore solos that weave in and out of the score and you get the textbook definition of a classic!

Much more recent, by some three decades, is John Beal’s also-powerful orchestral score for the Universal horror film The Funhouse, directed by Tobe Hooper in 1981, just before Hooper tackled Poltergeist. It’s a genuinely scary picture and Beal delivered the goods in grand style. The complete score goes on sale Tuesday, January 24. The one sheet entices: Pay To Get In, Pray To Get Out. But remember it’s only a movie, with a sensational score to go with it!