Intrada Soundtrack Forum

INTRADA Announces:



THE TWELVE CHORUSES
Composed by Miklos Rozsa
Winchester Cathedral Chamber Choir
Conducted by Allan Wilson and George Castle
INTRADA MAF 7134


Intrada announces the latest in its Excalibur Collection -- a brand new recording of Miklos Rozsa's The Twelve Choruses. The film choruses on this disc—derived from Ben-Hur (1959) and King of Kings (1961)—were published by Robbins Music, the publishing division of M-G-M, shortly after the films were released. Accessible and relatively easy to perform, they were intended primarily for church and school choirs. To expand their appeal and usefulness, most were published in two arrangements—mixed choir and women’s choir—with piano or organ accompaniment. Although the composer did not necessarily intend all 12 of these pieces to be performed as a group, they were recorded as such by Rózsa’s friend and associate Tony Thomas in the early 1980s and Christopher Palmer arranged some of them in a “Christmas Sequence” recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1992. This Intrada release is their first complete recording in over three decades.

As conductor Allan Wilson recalls: "This project came about following a recording I conducted at Phoenix Sound, Pinewood Film Studios. We had already recorded Rózsa’s The Red House for Intrada with the RSNO in Glasgow, Scotland, and needed to add a choir to a few of the tracks. Paul Talkington recalled a conversation he’d had with Paul Wing about a new choir that had been formed at Winchester Cathedral, so we decided to book them for this session at Pinewood. I was very impressed by the attitude and ability of the choir and in particular its pure—almost angelic—sound."

Whilst this is their first CD recording project, the Westminster Cathedral Chamber Choir has recorded the choral parts to a number of film scores and has other similar projects in the pipeline.

INTRADA MAF 7134
Retail Price: $19.99
Available NOW
For track listing and sound samples, please visit
http://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.8814/.f

Lord, have mercy. First HALF MOON STREET and now Rozsa's choral works.

Thank you profoundly, Doug and Roger, for keeping both the Rozsa "Polydor" series and Rozsa's choral music alive!

I have all the Excalibur recordings done by Intrada, and I most certainly will get this one. (And I'm always hoping for more.)

What a wonderful idea this project is, and from the sound clips, a wonderful album as well. I remember Bernard Herrmann said in an interview from Film Music Society's 'Unvarnished Chat' CD that "music is a living art," and it's good to see Intrada embrace that with new recordings like this. Also, just a heads up that the 'Prayer of Our Lord' sound clip seems to mistakenly link to a clip of 'The Twenty-Third Psalm.'

Is The Kings of Bethlehem from Ben Hur? It doesn't say it is, and I don't recognize it as such....what is it?

Still, very wonderful program (granted given more choral works exist it'd have been nice to have more....but alas). Definetly going to get this one. The arrangements just WORK very well, judging by the samples.

Kings of Bethlehem had been written by Rozsa specifically for this suite.

Doug, many thanks for this new CD, especially The Twenty-Third Psalm. I hope you'll succeed in perpetuating your Excalibur project, I have and appreciate them all – the Rozsa ones being among my favorites.

This is a very attractively presented CD with fine performances and well defined sound. It seems to have been a labor of love by all concerned so many thanks to Intrada for their continuing committment to Miklos Rozsa in releasing it.

Well I just got this today and I'm loving it. The arrangements seem very....I dunno...complete? Organic? Not sure the right word. Actually, given that I'm tempted to tag and catalog this as classical (of course the last piece and the 'Kings of Bethlehem' are by default). It actually sounds a lot like late 20th century choral music by Rutter et al....yet the source material is from a couple decades earlier than that particular sound. It's kinda interesting, that.

But yeah, terrific CD all around and if nothing else, nice and different.

Well it's more than the issue of the genre tag in the metadata, it's also if I put it in my actual database which I keep for all the classical music I own (but not film...though there's not exactly any real notable difference between, say, Shostakovich composing Hamlet for the play or for the film....I need to be consistent).

Listening again I'm further convinced this is, in essence, a stand alone composition which most of the music based on film themes -- beyond the small additions here and there and the 'King of Bethlehem' piece there's also the fact most of the pieces have new, specific, lyrics. So yeah I'm going to catalog this as "Twelve Choruses".

Incidentally, are the "two Christmas numbers" arranged by Harry Robert Wilson tracks 1 and 2?

As a bonus for the (sensational!) BLACK PATCH new recording, I requested this Rózsa bonus Twelve Choruses CD and holy great googly wonder cats, this is an incredible collection of music. My god this is a beautiful recording, thanks to all who played a part.

_________________
Randy Wilson
Dallas, TX