Intrada Soundtrack Forum

This wonderful score is simply Bill Conti's best and the original recording sounds so beautifully vibrant.

It is a shame that Hollywood re-creates big apes, space battles and other insane superlatives but apparently remains unable to license a fine academy award winning piece of musical craftsmanship which even runs less than 30 minutes for a CD release. Something is seriously wrong with that situation.

I don't really understand it since The Ladd Company does not seem to be one of the biggies and I always considered distributor warner bros to be a little more open minded towards score releases. But I also understand that Intrada wanted to go for a release but the authorities had no interest in making it happen, so I wonder which company was responsible for the decision and why.

It might be interesting to hear all the music Conti composed and recorded for the film.
Then again, judging from the music that's in the picture or on the Varèse suite, you could say that as long as there are countless available recordings of Holst's Planets and Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, this music is pretty well represented on cd already !
I don't blame Conti, I understand that's what the filmmakers asked him in the first place and the closer he got to the temp track the happier they were.
And I must say he had a lot of nerve conducting the LSO for the Varèse re-recording. I guess the musicians had a hard time keeping a straight face while playing a blatant rip-off of such well known classics.
Seriously, Conti's score for Gloria would make a much more interesting album.

I agree with you,

I like Gloria and his jazzy scores much more and I don´t care about The Right Stuff. But I most confess that I like his work on North and South.

BTW the classical borrowings in Right Stuff were due to the temp-track by Mr. Kaufman. But there were some other Conti scores which have the same problem (Masters of the Universe for example)

But I think of many of his scores are fun scores. Like Rocky or The Thomas Crown Affair (which is really good). And he composed some gorgeous themes for television.

I know what you're talking about, and I have to say that I didn't find too many differences between it and the Varese suite.

Now North and South, on the other hand...

_________________
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which can not fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance...that principle is contempt prior to investigation.
Herbert Spencer

There is so much music in the movie (including an excerpt from Mancini's music for Kauffmann's White Dawn) I don't think you 'll please any one with just one or two cdsof the score.
While we are on the topic of Conti's jazz scores . a forgotten one is from the Jill Clayburgh picture An Unmarried Woman. Great saxophone pieces a plenty, in that one.

_________________
"If music doesn`t sing, or dance, or have an interesting harmonic concept, then it shouldn`t be there at all. A film score should burn with its own fire, not merely glow in the dark like a pretty charcoal." – John Barry, 1972