Intrada Soundtrack Forum

October 3, 2000

Bond Back In Action 2
Composed by John Barry, Marvin Hamlisch,Bill Conti & Monty Norman
Conducted by Nic Raine
Played by the City of Prague Philharmonic
Silva Screen Records FILMCD 340
Total Time = 65:34

The name is... "Bond. James Bond". Familiar words, often heard over an equally familiar tune.

All the Bond movies have albums. DR. NO was the beginner. The record was mostly calypso, dance music for Jamaica. A couple of score cuts made it though. One of them became the legendary James Bond Theme.

For most Bond movies the albums had a title song plus score highlights. Back then composers usually wrote the music for the song and background score. Finished product was coherent, listenable. Tunes for GOLDFINGER and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE made great vocals and rich, melodic instrumentals too. Bond music was a class act.

John Barry made the biggest impact. All the early ones used him. He dropped out occasionally so someone like Marvin Hamlisch or Bill Conti or George Martin could take a swing. They did fine.

Everybody has a favorite Bond score, except me. GOLDFINGER was it for awhile. Nostalgia probably. Then YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE took over. Then ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE. For awhile I played FOR YOUR EYES ONLY nonstop, then LICENSE TO KILL. Maybe after that I stopped having favorites.

But I do have a favorite unrecorded cue. Everyone has a bunch of those. But I actually can pin it down to just one. Out of a million unreleased little cues over nearly four decades. One little tiny piece has remained on top of my James Bond wish list.

Now - at last - it’s recorded! Wow!! Thank you Silva Screen.

I’ll keep it a secret for a few minutes. So you’ll maybe keep reading.

Re-recording John Barry is difficult. He doesn’t write a lot of notes but the stuff is deceptively simple. Many attempts by others to capture his sound fail. There are reasons for this. He writes high parts for trumpet and French horn. His demands on them are sizable. His string writing is lean, melodic, but it’s often in unison, in octaves. All those upper strings together on the same notes. It’s tough on intonation. It’s hard to get. And when it comes to solos, flute, trumpet, whatever. Barry’s unyielding in making them exposed, in any register, up or down. John Barry just has a unique voice. Uncluttered, unyielding.

Credit orchestrator/conductor Nic Raine with doing the impossible. He’s found Barry’s signature. It’s lean writing, transparent. But still full-blooded. Understanding this is vital. Raine orchestrates for Barry so he’s there on the inside track. He conducts with "over-the-top" results that are far more interesting to listen to than clinically accurate playing. The Prague musicians have a chance to let loose. They get to make music.

And what music. OCTOPUSSY gets a suite. So does THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS. It comes off outstanding, the rhythms crisp, the energy level high. There are shorter bits from THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY.

Highlights include a suite from MOONRAKER. The music when Bond arrives at the Drax chateau was always rich, impressive. It’s here for the first time. A suite from THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN is nicely done too. Making a recorded debut are cues for "Nick Nack" and the "Slow Boat From China".

Another highlight. The movie version of the "Tank Drive Around St. Petersburg". Eric Serra did okay work on his Bond movie but GOLDENEYE underplayed the James Bond Theme just a little too much. It’s one thing to update things in Bond movies. New music, effects, politics. But they wouldn’t dream of taking away the action, the gorgeous women. Nor should they take away the signature tune. Someone recognized this and put a Monty Norman piece back into the finished movie. Serra left it off his album. Silva Screen puts it on theirs. Adapted by John Altman, it’s a striking, energetic take on a familiar theme.

And my favorite cue? The previously unreleased tidbit no one else probably noticed. No one except for my new best friend James Fitzpatrick. He’s the one who produced this terrific project.

Anyway, it’s from A VIEW TO A KILL. No kidding, really. Of all the James Bond movies my one standout favorite unrecorded cue, short as it was, came in this movie, when Bond rescued Stacey from the flaming City Hall in San Francisco. Not just a snippet of action or heroics, Barry heralded a fanfare of his main theme. For a few precious seconds the entire orchestra, led by brass, erupted from the inferno with a resplendent, triumphal, complete statement of the theme. As Bond descended the ladder, a hero, to me it was Barry who really saved the day. Find this brief gem here under the title "Fanfare".

Thank you James.

Fitzpatrick and Bond.

October 10, 2000

The Last Of The Mohicans
Composed by Trevor Jones & Randy Edelman
Conducted by Joel McNeely
Played by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Varese Sarabande 302 066 161 2
Total Time = 45:26

Stirring, passionate music. Stuff with sweep, drama, overwhelming power.

Music is prominent in the movie. There’s a lot of it too. The last quarter of an hour is scored sans dialog. A lot’s happening. Sacrifices, processions, killings, tragedy. Everything’s told with visuals and music. Long, emotional, strongly melodic music.

One big feature. It’s written to carry mood and emotion, not mimic specific action on screen. This isn’t common in movie music. Rather than tell you Hawkeye has just cleaved one of Magua’s Mohawks the music plays through the entire battle as a whole. No stingers punctuating knife thrusts. Instead the music goes for overall mood.

A great example. It’s night. Fort Henry is under siege. Spectacular images of cannon fire, explosions, British soldiers in striking red, black sky lit up by flames, lots of guys dropping dead. Trevor Jones ignores the individual elements, the cannon hits, the guy that just fell. Instead he methodically develops a single mood. It’s a battle between France and England, on North American soil. The British are losing, reinforcements aren’t coming. Over an ostinato of relentless bass and percussion, the music paints a portrait of despair. It’s a method of scoring favored by Ennio Morricone, James Horner, a few others. This time Trevor Jones.

His main theme is the anchor holding everything together. Identified with Hawkeye and emerging colonial struggles, it’s deceptively simple. For one thing, in terms of architecture, rather than smooth or flowing, it’s an angular, jagged melody. Note intervals leap dramatically downwards and up. There’s a Scottish "snap" within the line. It’s also incredibly lean. Absent are rousing rhythms, soaring counter melodies. Harmony comes from a powerful series of long, very thick, slowly changing chords. This clean, uncluttered melody over thick, prominent chords, carries substantial weight. It’s the emotional heart of the movie.

Trevor Jones wrote much of the music, but not all of it. When Twentieth Century Fox needed to guarantee completion before deadlines they brought in Randy Edelman. He got a thankless task, scoring filler scenes. Working independent of Jones he created serviceable music without benefit of a theme. He got one spotlight though. A courier sent out from Fort Henry races into the darkness under protection of Hawkeye’s rifle. Edelman catches the underlying drama with a tune darting in and out between minor and major harmonies, a glimmer of hope against overwhelming odds.

The movie was incredibly popular. Audiences went for the sweeping romance, like in TITANIC, where two lovers are vividly drawn but tragically dwarfed by bigger events surrounding them. You cared about Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Cora (Madeleine Stowe) and hoped they’d survive.

The music was popular too. A soundtrack was released by Hollywood Records, became a hit, sold well for years. But it was flawed. It had all the right music. But in one mess of a sequence!

Jones music came first, in a clump, then Edelman’s. The first half of the album was thematic, but climaxed in the middle of the disc. The second half was less accessible, had no where to go. Finally a brief song by Clannad, nicely used in the movie, came and went. Not designed to finish everything, the song went sideways from where the score began, with Edelman having the misfortune of carrying the second half without a theme. What appeared in the movie as cohesive, emotionally compelling music made an incredibly top-heavy album.

Now Varese Sarabande has fixed this. Plus they’ve given the score a reading not of clinical perfection, but "over-the-top" power. It’s recorded with stunning richness, detail. And awesome power. Quite simply, this might be the best of producer Robert Townson’s many re-recordings. It’s richer listening than the original soundtrack. The sequence is a vast improvement.

So’s the playing. Joel McNeely conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in a dynamic performance. With material less busy and complicated, he focuses on the emotional weight of it. And succeeds. It’s not complex, but emotionally draining music. It’s full of long lines needing sustained volume and weight, not hampered with nuance, decrescendos, that kind of stuff. McNeely figured it out and went for sheer power.

Perhaps the standout. The final cue, "Top of the World".

The music slowly grows in power as the theme and secondary subject play. When the theme returns those rich, thick harmonies are given importance. In fact, it’s these blocks of harmony that carry the weight throughout the score. Here in this finale, low brass and strings cut through everything, giving weight and intensity to the final bars.

It’s an emotionally draining score, one of the best of the nineties.

October 17, 2000

A Bridge Too Far
Composed and Conducted by John Addison
Rykodisc RCD 10746
Total Time = 38:06

One of the many movies buried during the latter half of 1977. STAR WARS was happening. But Richard Attenborough’s A BRIDGE TOO FAR wasn’t reviewed well by critics either. Big epic three-hour World War II movies were now risky ventures. Vietnam gave them a facelift.

Maybe not since THEY WERE EXPENDABLE had there been a movie quite like it. This one was about losing war. Not like an antiwar movie, or a PATHS OF GLORY kind of thing. This time war was in the foreground, staged expensively, in stunning detail. It was like an action war movie. All kinds of heroics, explosions, combat. Tanks up the wazoo. Yet it was about the nature of losing. Not just a battle, but an entire campaign. Losing in the trenches, losing at the command level. Just plain losing.

The title comes from the book by Cornelius Ryan. The story was about a 1944 Allied invasion on the retreating German army. Operation Market Garden was supposed to get Allies to Berlin. It didn’t work.

Attenborough presented the battles in amazing detail. Bridges, tanks, a spectacular parachute drop of 35,000 soldiers. Yet amidst all this he kept his story of defeat in the foreground. Losses by the Allies, the Dutch that suffered through the battles in Holland, particularly Arnhem. Losses by commanders who made costly decisions.

John Addison had his work cut out for him. A BRIDGE TOO FAR wasn’t a Vietnam protest movie. It wasn’t even an antiwar movie. But it wasn’t a guts and glory war movie either. Addison had to come up with a theme that fit in.

His solution. A march. Not complicated, not harmonically challenged. Just something to assist the war effort. Optimistic, forward-moving, richly melodic. Ingeniously, Addison fashioned two melodies out of the idea. One represented all those paratroopers, the other spoke for land forces.

Addison also wrote one of his finest melodies, appropriately sad. Used to portray tragic losses suffered by the Dutch, it’s moving, lyrical, and stays with you. Structurally, it also shows ingenuity. A central portion of the melody is actually drawn from a portion of the main march theme. Anyone that feels Addison was strictly lightweight might do well to study this score. Addison created a work that touches on typical war efforts, hones in on the tragedy, unfolding as cohesive, dramatically sound writing.

Most of the primary material is used in the "Overture". But it’s an overture drawn against convention however, maybe hinting at events to unfold. Addison begins it with the snap of snare drums, the swell of brass, the march. But it doesn’t come to any grand, rousing finish. Instead, Addison closes it with his tragic line, reducing the war to a single, soft minor chord.

Ensuring the mood remains, the following music plays as "A Dutch Rhapsody". It’s the line that stayed with me. Tender, built first on the piano with growing color from strings and woodwinds, the theme feels both sad, and nostalgic. It plays both as literally sad music for the losses depicted, and as nostalgic music representing liberation turned despair by the people in Holland. It’s material that shows up again in "Underground Resistance", where a bicycling Dutch boy is juxtaposed with the German presence.

But Addison knew this was also a war movie about this big invasion plan that was supposed to work. So the huge scene with all these paratroopers gets a resounding, fully optimistic rendition of the march. To give weight to it, Addison keeps low brass to the fore.

Throughout the movie various plans go wrong, things become futile. Addison chose not to score battle scenes in a "micky-mouse" fashion, mimicking any literal actions on screen. But he doesn’t just score through them as a whole either. He allows his two prevailing moods, optimistic march and tragic loss, to wage war themselves. Sometimes the march comes up, the bridges might just be taken. Then something falls apart and the loss becomes evident.

Having ample opportunity to portray the valiant efforts and tragic losses suffered, Addison had to come up with just the right musical conclusion to everything. The solution? Counterpoint.

Arnhem is leveled. Allies have lost big time. But this was still that last war where it seemed like there were good guys and bad guys. Like people knew what they were fighting about. So when people died in the end Addison gave them an "A" for effort. His march lifts up, plays straight through, and simply ends.

It’s neat to read that Addison was really the only composer for the job. John Addison was serving with the XXX Corps, the tank division involved in Operation Market Garden. He was there. You can’t get closer to understanding what occurred than that.

The original record album appeared on the United Artists label when the movie opened. This CD from Rykodisc duplicates it, albeit with far superior sound. Complimenting the package are detailed notes, numerous still shots, and a reproduction of the original, symbolic cover art: a spectacular shot of paratroopers gracefully soaring not from a blue sky, but a red one.

October 24, 2000

Clash Of The Titans
Composed and Conducted by Laurence Rosenthal
PEG Recordings PEG 014 A28693
Total Time = 47:28

Laurence Rosenthal conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. A fantasy movie with swords and sandals, gods and critters. Can't miss.

Ray Harryhausen movies ruled for decades. Kids from the fifties through the seventies grew up seeing his imagination on screen. With meticulous stop-motion animation he made beasts galore. Terrorizing people, crossing swords with them, chasing them on land, over seas, in the air.

Skeletons fought Jason and his Argonauts. Flying saucers attacked Earth from skies above. Cowboys on horseback roped a dinosaur. A crab big enough to snatch a man with a single claw, a horse tiny enough to fit in a bread box. If it could be imagined Harryhausen created it.

Music in his movies was unique. It began in obscurity, ended in fame.

His early movies came in the fifties. Music budgets were low. Scores were sometimes uncredited, sometimes culled from existing libraries, written by under-appreciated composers given small budgets.

Then overnight something changed. 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD brought the fifties to a close with music by Bernard Herrmann. After that Harryhausen made music a top priority in his movies. More landmark scores by Herrmann followed. For years he got the best from Miklos Rozsa, Jerome Moross, Laurie Johnson, Mario Nascimbene, Roy Budd and Laurence Rosenthal. Then movies changed underneath him.

By 1981, when CLASH OF THE TITANS opened, most fantasy and science fiction fans expected a lot of bang for their buck. STAR WARS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, STAR TREK, the ultra-gooey monster in ALIEN. This stuff was getting pretty realistic. What Harryhausen brought to life began looking frayed around the edges.

So he stopped.

CLASH OF THE TITANS was the end of Harryhausen's reign. Laurence Rosenthal didn't know this at the time but he knew about the success of STAR WARS and company. Like his comrades did for two decades prior, Rosenthal fashioned some of his most imaginative, exciting music.

Work was cut out for him. This was a movie about Perseus, son of Zeus, and his beloved princess Andromeda. The producer requested music in great classical tradition, the stuff of Wagner, of Richard Strauss. No small chore. Rosenthal responded with music full of themes, Wagnerian motifs, colorful ideas. And he did something else.

Laurence Rosenthal composed music evoking past tradition, then infused it with complex harmony and dissonance. Along with North (DRAGONSLAYER), Williams (RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK), Vangelis (CHARIOTS OF FIRE), Bernstein (HEAVY METAL), a few others, Rosenthal created one of the best scores of 1981.

A few words about this PEG reissue, and Intrada's minor contribution. The original Columbia album fit length and economic needs of a typical record aimed at the masses. Rosenthal chose highlights representing the colorful, fantastic set pieces. He couldn't represent more cerebral, complex parts of the score.

Over the years Intrada has worked with Larry on legitimate efforts to preserve his output. This includes ongoing work with numerous studios, rummaging vaults, transferring music dating back to the fifties. When plans for this reissue arose several years ago we worked with both MGM and CBS to locate unmixed, unedited session masters. The hunt posed challenges. It also had a happy ending.

We found two reels of unedited, original Dolby A-encoded session masters. Included were some of the more complex cues. We mixed, edited and mastered about ten additional minutes. When PEG introduced those three new tracks to the existing album masters the result was a better representation of the finished score. Listeners have the highly playable original album with a little more depth. A few more minutes to notice a dramatic contrast between the classical Rosenthal and his more personalized, complex side.

His "Prologue and Main Title" launches with a sign of portent. Massive trombones, minor chords. Ideas introduced here occur often, usually associated with the gods or their activities. Soon the main theme takes off. Fanfare-like, racing upwards, then down, it represents flight. Here, under credits, it accompanies an eagle in motion. Judiciously placed, Rosenthal mostly holds back on the tune until midway in the movie. It's here that we meet Pegasus, that most glorious of winged white horses. As Perseus tames the mythical beast, Rosenthal makes four minutes of breathtaking music.

There's a dark, sinewy line for Calibos, hate-filled "Lord of the Marsh". Appropriately introduced in lower winds and brass, then handed to violins, its a line surrounded by stabbing chords, jabs of dark color, twisted cries of pain. Calibos is, of course, horribly deformed.

At the movie's heart is a love story. Eventually Perseus goes on to free Andromeda, chained to the rocks. Rosenthal shapes their love theme, not with thick strokes but a transparent line for upper strings over delicate, subtly-shifting harmonies. It's probably the most tender melody this composer wrote.

The movie weaves around and about the myths. From the heavens above, to the marshes below. Critters that sting, horses that fly, a metal owl that bobs and sputters, sword fights with mortals and immortals. Locales change constantly. So does the music. Matching the on-screen pace, Rosenthal constantly brings in themes, moves them away, plays with small motifs, builds new ideas.

It's simply one of the best scores ever written to support a Harryhausen movie. Twenty years later both still hold up most beautifully.

October 31, 2000

Walkabout
Composed by John Barry
Nic Raine conducts the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra
Silva Screen FILMCD 339
Total Time = 65:44 (Walkabout = 26:51)

John Barry on a personal level. Gentle, sensitive, just plain beautiful music.

When WALKABOUT played in 1971 people knew Nicolas Roeg as a photographer of movies, not a director. This time he did double duty.

His movie was multi-layered. One level deals with two children abandoned in the Australian outback. It’s a simple adventure story moving from one place to another. On a slightly deeper note it’s a tale of survival. Another layer deals with childhood innocence, the journey through adolescence. There’s a symbol of Christianity, the aborigine that brings them to water, guides them. There are often unusual images, shots of hunting. And there are the lizards, inhabitants that have been around for a long time.

It’s neat because you get out of it what you put into it. Plain outdoor adventure movie, complex tale of the savage and the civilized, intellectual stuff, even religion.

Approaching the music couldn’t have been simple. Too many angles. Certainly there were easier ways to go than where Barry went. It’s fascinating that he chose to score WALKABOUT not from the outside, but the inside, so to speak. He didn’t mimic the adventure. He didn’t color for locale.

He created lean, transparent music. He repeated phrases, working inside to make his ideas nag, dig away. Several melodic ideas appear, each is functional.

The main theme underlines the children’s journey, particularly the teenage girl (Jenny Agutter) and the more personal growth she undergoes. Barry launches the tune not at the onset but only after the children become abandoned victims of their father’s suicide. Like an awakening it unfolds in gently reaching layers. First, a repeating harpsichord figure, then a line in solo bassoon. Delicate chords enter, the melody emerges in violins. Into this mix, working from within, a solo flute manages a counter melody that follows the basic shape of the main theme but speaks alone. It’s a skillful piece, with strings soon increasing in texture, dividing into both main theme and counter melody.

A secondary idea, the initial music used by Barry, appears in the track "The Children". As in the main theme heard prior, this unfolds over a simple repeating figure, here on flute and harp. A menacing line emerges, combining bassoon with oboe and muted trumpet. Unknowns lay ahead.

Here Barry introduces another important melody using a chorus on phrases from a children’s song "Who Killed Cock Robin?" The tone is religious, in a major key, the words darker, more ominous. There’s death. It’s a memorable sound, a simple line over two shifting major chords.

As the music develops Barry finally suggests something of the overall mood. He avoids thick colors and strong musical themes however, suggesting dangers real and imagined with ghostly wisps of woodwind and voice. Both "Stranded" and "Night in the Outback" allow exploration of this darker territory.

A rare display of brass, in unison, lift spirits during "Survival Test/The Journey", a bright spot amidst dark hues.

New, important material opens "Together at Sunrise", skillfully mingling a new theme with faint suggestions of the choral children’s theme, here in strings.

By the time "The Deserted Settlement" plays one senses that Barry’s game plan included maturing ever so delicately from a darker world into warmer territory. His reprise of the main theme, "Back To Nature" plays with a rich, emboldened flavor. Standing out is his melding of the simple repeating figures from the beginning with a mature, rounded statement of his main theme. In this guise he brings everything home.

The score makes its world premiere in this complete recording from Silva Screen. Producer James Fitzpatrick wisely keeps the music in focus, miking close enough to pry subtle details and textures from the players. It’s a delicate score, often dependent upon tiny ideas passed amongst players as the music unfolds. A nuance in percussion here, a muted trumpet there. All of it’s captured with controlled playing sensitive to the unique needs of the music.

Strong packaging and informative notes accompany the album. Filling out for length are suites from several other Barry scores. Examining less familiar territory Fitzpatrick has included generous glimpses of THE BETSY, THE CORN IS GREEN, THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS, SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON, a few others.

One rich musical journey worth taking.