Intrada Soundtrack Forum

January 02, 2001

Best Of 2000
My Favorite Albums
Of The Year

The rules are simple. Any album released during the year 2000 is a candidate. New score, old score, expanded score, re-recorded score. Order and number of titles is random. Quite simply, if it came out last year, if I played it often, it made my list.

The year 2000 was a good one for Jerry Goldsmith albums. Not for new scores, but for old ones. Highlighting his parade were two movie scores featuring Japanese music. Wow, what coincidence! After nearly twenty years of waiting, both TORA! TORA! TORA! and THE CHALLENGE finally made albums. Both came with stunning stereo sound, all their classic moments intact. TORA! TORA! TORA! displays Goldsmith's gift for melding Oriental colors with western idioms. The main theme is outstanding, a moving line heralding tragic events to come. THE CHALLENGE bristles with excitement, including some of Goldsmith's best ostinato-based action music. The fish market chase and sword fight inside a modern high-rise are incredible examples.

After years of absence UNDER FIRE came back. Probably the best score of 1983, it combined guitar and pan flute with orchestra, creating an incredibly strong backdrop for political struggles in 1979 Nicaragua. Goldsmith's other masterpiece for 1983, TWILIGHT ZONE - THE MOVIE also made it to CD last year. Stunning sound and perfect sequencing of the music into lengthy suites made it a winner. That these two albums are only available as imports from Europe illuminates the sorry attitude major U.S. labels have regarding their own libraries of serious music.

And if that wasn't enough to elect Goldsmith "soundtrack king of 2000" the newly-expanded TOTAL RECALL punched home the nomination. Never did Goldsmith write a fiercer, more energetic score. With half the album devoted to his frenzied action writing, the seventy-plus minutes literally raced by.

John Williams was up there too. No less than three major works were expanded and presented in new editions. JAWS created genuine fear out of two simple notes and a judicious use of music in 1975. Excerpts made it to record before. The whole thing made it last year. Hearing not just the scary stuff but the quiet parts for the first time made for perfect listening. Standing beside that masterpiece with equal stature comes an expanded SUPERMAN THE MOVIE. With everything included now, one can savor that magnificent "Death of Jonathan Kent" sequence at last. Why this music never made it to the original issue is anyone's guess. STAR WARS EPISODE ONE: THE PHANTOM MENACE finally came in a 2-disc version that should have come the year before! The first issue played like a mere preview to the action. This new "ultimate edition" is the one to play.

And last years' European release of ANGELA'S ASHES only continued to make U.S. labels look poor. While Americans suffered through dialog to hear the truly haunting music, a European issue got it right. Some of the warmest oboe playing on a film score, audible at last. Rounding my Williams play list is THE PATRIOT, replete with stirring Americana themes and rousing battle music.

There were lots of other rewards. DINOSAURS tops my list of new music. James Newton Howard fused powerful action and sweeping melody for the best new score for 2000. Hans Zimmer runs a close second with GLADIATOR, an album mixing powerful, dark-edged music with the best sonics of the year. James Horner put his music to THE PERFECT STORM into the best-produced album of new music, showcasing his ability to compose lengthy, well-structured cues with substantial weight and substance. And television had a share of tuneful glory with ON THE BEACH. Christopher Gordon gave the medium music of overwhelming power via orchestra and chorus. A totally different route than the 1959 path Ernest Gold took, Gordon's new score was one of the best ever written for television. His generous album was outstanding.

Christopher Young fashioned an outstanding album out of his stunning music for BLESS THE CHILD. Growling and scary cues for chorus and orchestra joined together in five long suites. More recently, James Newton Howard provided a superb balance of action and sensitivity with his album for VERTICAL LIMIT, while Stephen Warbeck put together an intense and compelling representation of his score for QUILLS.

Albums from overseas were highlighted by GORMENGHAST, superbly crafted music by Richard Rodney Bennett, and SIX-PACK, an exciting, suspenseful, dramatically scored thriller by Elia Cmiral. Standing out as well was one of the richest melodies composed by Michel Legrand. It highlighted a superb, lengthy concert work on the album to PARTIR REVENIR. And coming from Europe recently was the soundtrack album for Roman Polanski's TESS, scored by Philippe Sarde. One of the finest scores for 1979, the music is rousing, dramatic and passionate. The perfect album also debuts Sarde's music for THE TENANT. Digging into the Hammer Film library, music for THE LOST CONTINENT made a premier on CD this last year. For the thrills and chills Gerard Schurmann wrote some of his finest music, highlighted by a great theme and terrific action music.

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD was one of the top scores for 1967. The CD issued last year re-presented the original album with clean stereo sound. Richard Rodney Bennett wrote the tunes, both moving and pastorale. Also bowing on CD was the trim and tidy album Fred Karlin originally assembled for his 1973 Michael Crichton thriller WESTWORLD. Extremely well recorded, the music boasted pioneer orchestral/electronic sounds within a high-tech/western setting.

Really going back, Max Steiner's costume score for ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN made a CD premier last year. Crisp mono sound, with rousing fanfares, parades, duels and intrigue highlighted by one of his most memorable, dark-hued love themes. From roughly the same era came Hugo Friedhofer's THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES. The seventies re-recording by Frank Collura got a facelift last year. The remixed album offered the cleanest, most dynamic presentation yet for this most important of all film scores. And Friedhofer's masterful western score for BROKEN ARROW finally made it to recordings. One of the most dynamic main titles ever, the music is highlighted by stark, angled melodies and intense brass writing. Newest to my top play list of oldies being world-premiered is a stunning album to FROM THE TERRACE. Penned by Elmer Bernstein during a decade of sweeping, passionate scores for adult soap operas, this one from 1960 showcased both incredible scope and lush melody. And for pure fun, almost James Bond style, last year brought about a fantastic album of score-only material by George S. Clinton for both AUSTIN POWERS movies. Produced with care, the album provided a terrific cross section of funny, exciting music that laughed with and saluted the spy genre.

The year 2000 also brought about a handful of spectacular new recordings to older scores. Topping the list was a new look at Benjamin Frankel's BATTLE OF THE BULGE from 1965. Under the baton of Werner Andreas Albert, this spectacular new performance detailed some of the most technically demanding film music ever written. Pity the brass players, but they played better than those struggling on the actual film soundtrack. Two Franz Waxman scores received brand new performances of terrific quality. Frederic Talgorn re-created the classic PEYTON PLACE, capturing an exceptionally strong string sound and losing none of the transparency highlighting the score. And William Stromberg led his players in a spectacular, detailed recording of the exciting OBJECTIVE, BURMA! Here Waxman wrote some of his most challenging music, full of color, highlighted by a rousing march theme. It's all captured with precision and vigor.

Two final, outstanding re-recordings stood out. John Barry fashioned a warm, deceptively simple score for WALKABOUT. The new reading under Nic Raine captures all the subtlety and details, highlighted by haunting choral work. And lastly, doing the near-impossible, a new interpretation of the original score by Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman for THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS kept me spellbound. It's music thickly scored, reliant on massive, heavy playing. Coming up with more compelling sound than used on the actual soundtrack, Joel McNeely led his players on the better recording for this major work. This time a re-recording simply out-powered the original! One of the strongest scores of the last decade, this album even replaced stirring passages deleted from the original soundtrack release. A flawless souvenir of the movie and powerful listening away from it.

One thing is certain. The level of activity in movie music albums continues to spiral upwards. Major re-recordings occur at regular intervals. Score albums to new pictures come every week. Labels from overseas continue to rescue quality music that major U.S. labels haven't the intelligence to deal with. And specialty labels focusing on soundtracks keep the roster of old and new scores coming in one long steady stream.

Fashioning a favorite album list for 2001 should be a breeze.

January 09, 2001

The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre
Composed by Max Steiner
William T. Stromberg conducts the
Moscow Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Marco Polo 8.225149
60:15


Great album!

Easy target this time. One of the great American movies, and Steiner on top of it. There's been criticism of the score through the years. Too Spanish. Not enough western stuff. Blah blah blah.

It's not a western. It's got trappings like one, but it's really something else. It's a character study, a psychological study. Though played as if outdoors much of it was shot indoors. It's grim, with the darkness of film noir. Heck, there's even all the greed and corruption of seedy crime thrillers. There's no "stinkin" happy ending either.

Steiner saw this and avoided outdoor Americana completely. He wrote darker, leaner than usual. Sweeping western tunes are nowhere to be found. There's plenty of music but it's heard in shorter bits, absent of soaring upper string lines. Everything has an edge.

The music is also well-crafted. There are themes or motifs for the mountain, the gold, the paranoia, the bandits. There's a Spanish-flavored figure for stirring the blood and Mexican music to reflect locale. Interestingly the three leads don't get individual themes. For the trio of American prospectors Steiner provides a single jaunty tune. It's the familiar melody, the one that shows up in CITY SLICKERS II. Not just a rolling theme, it binds the incongruous trio. It says these guys have been down on their luck and collectively seek the big one. It says they're up for the long trek. And it shows they're funny together at first, two tenderfeet and an old guy with experience.

John Huston ensured his opening scenes did carry some weight. First Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) is seen begging in the streets. He's soon given a chance to earn a bundle, but the employer never delivers. There's a nasty fight. The three prospectors eventually meet up and take to the mountains by train, only to be attacked by bandits. Lots of tough stuff going on. By the time the trio starts on their trek there's been a lot to watch.

Dobbs is the one who loses it, of course. Steiner matches his transformation with subtle uses of the prospecting theme in low instruments, sustaining low unison sounds, increasing the density of his harmonies. Colors include low bass clarinet and very low contrabassoon.

Steiner also created a "gold" theme, a shimmering metallic sound really, using harps, vibraphones, pianos, celesta, glockenspiel, triangle and suspended cymbals.

TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE has been recorded in various suites many times. This new album from Marco Polo presents a substantially complete recording of it, heard in film sequence. Listeners will hear the powerful "mountain" theme without introduction, launching the "Main Title". Numerous ideas from the score are touched upon before the familiar "trek" theme takes over. Then things get darker, tension appears. With the music in film sequence one can feel the successive underlying elements of the movie appear, the growing mistrust, paranoia, greed.

Highlights are plentiful. The "Main Title" of course. But don't fail to take notice of how sensitive the music for Cody's end is. A prospector that happens upon the trio, he's met with mistrust. Before he can be dealt with by execution, bandits intervene. There's a battle and Cody's slain. One of the trio then reads a letter Cody was carrying from his now widow. It's a memorable scene, made so by incredibly gentle writing for strings and harp. With all the drama just offered, Steiner instead goes for a reflective, repentant mode.

All of the music has been restored by veteran John Morgan. In addition he's assembled the numerous shorter bits into longer pieces while retaining that much-desirable film sequence. No easy feat. Conductor William Stromberg shows a liking for the music and gives the oft-recorded main title a deliberate, unhurried pace. It's a standout. A close-miked recording allows a display of amazing colors, the "gold" theme, the paranoia music. And it's played very well by the orchestra.

Yea, TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE has been recorded before.

Now it's really been done.

January 16, 2001

Short Takes -
Winter 2000
Various Composers

A quick look at soundtracks coming late-ish last year. Nothing for a top ten but still good stuff that for one reason or another didn't warrant a full page.

Highest on the list: QUILLS. Stephen Warbeck wrote great music for a difficult movie. Sometimes brooding, later intense. Curiously, repeated playings softened the impact. Still, mostly a powerhouse experience. Funny story here. A local reviewer was chastised for not warning a startled patron about the violent content. The reviewer's response: "We're talking about the Marquis De Sade here! What did you expect?"

Another period subject, the oft-told LES MISERABLES, now with Gerard Depardieu and John Malkovich. This time Jean-Claude Petit penned the tunes. The music is strong, melodic. Not so focused on period or props, Petit scores to Hugo's drama.

James Newton Howard delivered two recent projects. UNBREAKABLE was M. Night Shyamalan's less-mesmerizing follow-up to THE SIXTH SENSE, but Howard carried his part with dignity. The music was rich, sensitive, ultimately expressive. A well-produced album rewards.

PROOF OF LIFE was a sort-of exciting movie, something for Russell Crowe fans to chat about anyway. Danny Elfman provided a strong score. Locale, action are the focus. The CD gives you a glimpse, but it's way too brief. Almost a tease.

CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON has supercharged action, lots of story to figure out. Tan Dun wrote an impressive, deliberate score. Percussion, strong ideas abound, but the composer went for elegance and drama instead of excitement.

Rachel Portman, ever interesting, made melodic, light-textured music for CHOCOLAT. Mixed reviews for the movie, but Portman keeps the music free of sentiment or whimsy. Her scoring for strings and woodwinds remains gentle, affecting. A winner.

James Horner wrote impressive, lavish music for Ron Howard's take on THE GRINCH. Or HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS. Or DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS. I'm not sure of the title since all those have shown up somewhere. The movie had moments, like the toy factory, and of course Jim Carrey. But no charm. Horner did terrific work though, balancing fancy, sentiment and excitement. A footnote. The album is a loser. More a movie souvenir than good listening. Songs, dialog and score. Blah for the songs and dialog over score. Arghh!

A low profile movie with rich music: THE CONTENDER. Larry Groupe (the same guy as Lawrence Nash Groupe) gave the movie an Americana score, heavy on brass, heavy on Copland, plus complex harmonies of his own. One of the better scores of the year. The album highlights it, adds music for DETERRENCE as a bonus.

Still Americana, but darker, more action-packed, is THIRTEEN DAYS. Trevor Jones still has Mohicans in his blood, but keeps his score balanced between sweep and excitement. Noteworthy are powerful action motifs that populate the latter portion. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the brink of nuclear war, the chaos of thirteen unforgettable days. Strong fodder for background music. And a long, well-recorded album brings everything alive.

Christopher Young stayed active all year. His early-in-the-year movie was WONDER BOYS. His late-in-the-year movie was... WONDER BOYS. A rare event, Paramount figured no one went to the movie early in the year but might go if they re-released it later on. Critics liked it. People still didn't go. Young tapped into a breezy, quirk-ish atmosphere. His infectious music featured, amongst other things, organ and accordion.

A few things from overseas of note. LA BICYCLETTE BLEUE carried a rich, tuneful Michel Legrand score. Reminding one of his Jacques Demy stuff, the music was a breath of fresh air. More dramatic, Bruno Coulais did LES RIVIERES POURPRES, also known as THE PURPLE RIVER. Coulais provided terse, rhythmically charged almost-action music. Dark strings, jabbing trombones are highlights. And the peerless Ennio Morricone weighed in with MALENA. Giuseppe Tornatore brings out good things in Morricone, here recreating World War II Italy. The music is incredibly nostalgic, at times haunting with viola, at times savage with brass. With a tongue-in-cheek motif thrown in, Morricone covers a lot of ground. Some of his best work in years is here. A great album arriving at year's end, capping a season of memorable stuff.

Off and running now with another year.

January 23, 2001

The Fugitive
Music by Pete Rugolo
Harry Rabinowitz conducts the
London Studio Symphony Orchestra
Silva Screen Records SSD 1106
Total Time = 47:18

One of the great TV shows. Music that has been on my "wish list" for years. It's been a long wait, and worth it.

Television music isn't always this good. Mini-series have budgets, subjects that generate rewarding scores. But day-to-day TV is different. There's just too much of it. Endless episodes in every genre, programming wall-to-wall. Masterpiece compositions aren't common, nor required. For years many TV shows didn't even get their own original music.

But sometimes they did get original music, themes for characters, locales. There have been good ones too. THE TWILIGHT ZONE, PETER GUNN, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, PLAYHOUSE 90, that kind of stuff. I always liked THE BIG VALLEY. A close friend swears by the Irwin Allen stuff. There are others. But against the gazillion hours of shows, it's still a select group.

THE FUGITIVE is one.

Pete Rugolo scored original music, recorded it in London under Harry Rabinowitz. Episodes over the four-year run used his stuff mixed with library music stored from other shows. It's a credit that his original music for THE FUGITIVE stood out.

Rugolo was a product of both classical training and big band arranging. If you played in high school or college jazz ensembles you read Pete Rugolo "charts" at some point. The classical background gave Rugolo an edge to his harmonic language. But band writing was his thing. Along with Nelson Riddle, Benny Carter, Kenyon Hopkins, Henry Mancini and others, Pete Rugolo scored with crisp, tight brass, unison strings, strong rhythms and a solid beat. But Rugolo didn't just mirror the jazz-symphonic music of the medium. He did some unique things.

He wrote over an hour of music to be used throughout the series. But he didn't follow the norm. Instead of fashioning generic action stuff, a love theme, sad tunes, happy ones, Rugolo went the opposite direction. He designed one theme, then wrote endless variations on it. Strong, dramatic, frenzied, sensitive, a style for every need. But always that same tune. And almost always in the same key, no matter what mood. It made each episode coherent, even with library music in the mix. Where most short television cues allowed little time for thematic development, this TV show got just that!

Another facet of Rugolo's score. He wrote in blocks of color with a clean, uncluttered palette. He kept groups separate, like all the brass, or all the strings. It was common for cues to be one family of instruments. On some cues he had all brass playing one section and all strings playing another.

But it was that one main tune that made everything work.

And what a flexible tune! Four notes, one down by itself and three up there clumped together. It's deceptively simple because it symbolizes "reaching for freedom" yet does so much more. Initially a "running" theme under the titles, it slides between cold-blooded action and emotional feeling with ease. Over rhythms, blending with solemn strings. It does everything but make coffee.

For example, it suggests a major key, but also plays in minor. It works in unison, it works harmonized. Sometimes it's given simple chords, other times elaborate harmony. It works under dissonance. On brass. On strings. Whatever.

This new album from Silva presents over 45 minutes of Rugolo's original music. While many of the cues run less than two minutes the mono-thematic idiom makes everything cohesive.

Several cues stand out. On opposite sides are two particularly strong treatments. Track two (The Kimbles) highlights a gentle side, combining major and minor sonorities. Solo oboe over strings, without any brass. Track 23 (Freedom and Finale) goes about-face and plays a slugging trombone ostinato under fortissimo trumpet stingers as French horns blow the tune. Two cues showcasing the incredible stretch Rugolo puts his melody through.

Track four (Under Arrest) got used a lot. It opens with just brass on the tune, additional color coming from mutes. Harmonies are complex, dissonant. Tremolo strings soon enter. It's a cue heard in countless scenes of jeopardy for Richard Kimble.

Another strong cue comes as the first half of track six (The Verdict / Train Wreck), also oft-used. Signaling an approaching commercial break, it's largely a long crescendo of mood. Bits of the theme mingle with other ideas as the music grows in volume. On this album the cue edits (awkwardly) into an unrelated, less-familiar segment for screaming brass.

Sound quality is quite good. Anomalies of the aged source tapes are compensated for by strong dynamics and clean, close-miked recordings. Everything's crisp without being too bright, something nice for aging 35-year-old mono recordings.

A neat extra. The cover art looks like something out of an old television soundtrack album. It's got a sixties duo-tone look, great shots of David Janssen, and terrific, readable notes by Jon Burlingame.

Catch this one.

January 30, 2001

Westworld
Music by Fred Karlin
Chapter III Records CHA 1003-2
Total Time = 32:45

Forerunner to JURASSIC PARK. To me, anyway. It's got the same author, Michael Crichton. It's about a theme park with guests paying big bucks to experience it. And everything goes awry.

More than just a passing resemblance here. There's also mixing high-tech with the past. Golly. It's the same movie. Well, sort of.

In 1973 it was high concept. Richard Benjamin and James Brolin were new-ish stars, Yul Brynner was polished, professional. And the Harvard medical doctor-turned-author was directing his first movie.

Westworld was part of a trio of theme parks recreating fantasies for guests, replete with realistic settings and lifelike robots. Act tough, get into a wild west gunfight, and you'd always win. You got to be the fastest draw in town. Or the best ladies man. Nothing could go wrong.

Sure.

Fred Karlin came to the project with experience scoring late sixties Pakula/Mulligan movies. UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE, THE STERILE CUCKOO, STALKING MOON. Karlin also played trumpet, a pursuit that continues to this day.

His approach to WESTWORLD was innovative. Orchestra and electronics. Both had been used before, one or the other. But Karlin integrated both on a recording stage, in equal parts. Not just gimmicks, but compositions appropriate to both. The results. Fresh-sounding music, blending an old western past with a new high-tech future. Along with stuff for Roman and Medieval Worlds, music for WESTWORLD had little precedent. Fred Karlin was a pioneer.

One of his neatest tricks was deceptively simple. His main theme. Sweeping vistas of Copland, Moross? Rambunctious rhythms of Bernstein? Brooding, strummed melodies of Morricone?

None of the above.

This was a fun place, a happening kind of town. You came here for a good time. So Karlin got you started off on the right boot. Happy music, major keys, fiddles, banjos. Not a scare in sight. Tracks like "The Western Warble" and "Theme from Westworld" pluck and grind with the best old saloon stuff. Deceptively simple. Karlin scores the right mood. And something else. Long before it became cliché, Karlin telegraphs nothing. His tunes keep you off guard.

But things go wrong. Bullets get real. People die.

Karlin does a number of interesting things with the robot stuff. Routine malfunctions are expected, planned on. "Robot Repair" showcases the clinical nature of labs designed to get broken things up and running again. Long, lean ideas with open harmonies, snippets of guitar, create sterile western environments with high-tech hardware. An old west sound and a futuristic one at the same time. Neat trick.

And his standout device. Ripping electronic effects from harmonica, autoharp, cymbalom grate against pounding left hand piano figures. Yul Brynner, "The Gunslinger" from hell. Shoot him, the blood squirts, down he goes. Then down he goes again, and again, because he keeps coming back. Eventually he gets a bit mad over this. It's a powerful, unrelenting motif signaling a character unwilling to go down for the count.

Once the movie becomes a pursuit tale, Karlin increases the texture of his robot music, adding tempo and density to the mix. Brynner vs. Benjamin. A robot pretending to be a real gunfighter vs. a city fella playing like a cowboy. What a showdown.

This score was exceptionally well-recorded, detailed to a fault. It's captured well in this recent CD from Chapter III Records. Currently working with some fifty MGM titles previously issued on vinyl, Chapter III plays an important role in movie music recordings.

Packaging, however, continues to be a drawback. Track titles remain located inside the booklet only, making quick location of favorites a chore. Covers are cluttered with garish logo material, forcing often-striking artwork to share the spotlight. A little too much glare.

But the music's the thing. WESTWORLD is the score.

And Fred Karlin wins the day.