Best Soundtrax of 06: Part 2 – Restorations & Compilations

By: Randall Larson
Date: Thursday, January 18, 2007

LAST YEAR’S BIG RECOMMENDATIONS

As with previous years, I have separated my assessment of the year’s best soundtrack releases into new scores (soundtrack CDs of scores for films released in 2006) and newly-released archival restorations or compilations of film music, released during 2006. I gave my faves for best new soundtracks in my column for January 4^th – here is my carefully considered and unranked gathering of the best and most significant first-time releases, expanded editions, and compilations of film music from the 2006 release list:

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – The Complete Recordings (Reprise Records)

As with 2005’s The Fellowship of the Ring – The Complete Recordings, the fuller rendition of Howard Shore’s second LOTR score allows listeners to savor the nuances and careful development of Shore’s middle-of-the-trilogy score, as it reprises thematic material from the first film, introduces new material, and hints at musical concepts that won’t be fully developed and harmonized until the third film. Again, three discs are given over to the recording of the score in its entirety, with a fourth disc being a DVD that presents the whole thing in stunning 5.1 surround sound (the score is that of the extended version of The Two Towers). Shore’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is an operatic symphony that is among the finest musical accomplishments of the last half century. The plethora of unreleased material on this beautifully packaged edition is mouth-watering at the least, and the sonic dynamic achieved on the surround sound DVD of the entire 188-minute score is simply astonishing. Also significant is Doug Adam’s 46-page notes that itemizes and categorizes returning themes, new themes, textures and instrumentation (borrowing again from Adams’ forthcoming book). Hearing the complete Two Towers score from start to finish, without interruption of dialog, sound effect, or quietude, really emphasizes what an accomplishment the music is. The score works vastly well as an equal partner of any component of the film itself, but it also resounds magnificently as pure music – music derived from and associated with the characters, textures, and story developments of the film, but able to achieve a viable existence as a splendid storytelling symphonic narrative all on its own. I can hardly wait for next winter’s release of the complete Return of the King and I have every expectation of finding that one listed right here in ’08.

Elmer Bernstein's Filmmusic Collection

A release as massive as its sales price, Film Score Month’s ultra-lavish and ultra-expensive 13-CD box set, Elmer Bernstein’s Film Music Collection, is a loving and lasting restoration of some of the first archival soundtrack releases ever – compiled, recorded, and distributed through legendary composer Elmer Bernstein’s own mail order company. The entire series has long been out-of-print and a kind of Holy Grail for film music aficionados. FSM’s 12-disc boxed set compiles all of the EBFMC releases, which includes definitive performances of classic scores by Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, Miklos Rozsa, Bernard Herrmann (including the unused and, until Bernstein releases it, unheard Torn Curtain score), Alfred Newman, Alex North, Dimitri Tiomkin, and Bernstein himself (including a definitive performance of Bernstein’s sublime To Kill A Mockingbird). The albums were all conducted by Bernstein in England, many with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. (For contractual reasons, one of the 14 FMC LPs – Scorpio by Jerry Fielding – is not included in this set, as that was an original soundtrack album and not a Bernstein re-recording.) The 13 Bernstein-conducted FMC albums are presented on 11 CDs in the box set. As a special bonus, the final disc in this box set features Bernstein's never-before-released 2003 Prague re-recording of his score for Kings Of The Sun – a 1963 Mayan adventure starring Yul Brynner. The immense package includes 136-page book with reproductions of original artwork and extensive track-by-track liner notes plus new introductions by Jon Burlingame, Jay Alan Quantrill, Lukas Kendall.

Amazing Stories Vol. 1

Intrada’s initial two release in what is to become a 3-volume collection of music from the 1985-86 TV anthology series, Amazing Stories is an absorbing compilation of music from some of film scoring’s top talents. The show, a kind of revival of the Twilight Zone-ish sci-fi anthology series of the early 1960s helmed by many of Hollywood’s top feature-film directors was scored with a broad array of feature-like musical approaches from a notable assortment of major Hollywood composers. The music ranges from John Williams’ effervescent title theme and his score for the pilot episode, “Ghost Train” with its whispers of whimsy and personal destiny and awakened memory; Georges Delerue’s intricately passionate romantic melodies for the melancholic love stories “The Doll,” “Without Diana,” and “Without Ben,” James Horner’s folksy Americana music for the sentimental Civil War memory, “Alamo Jobe,” Billy Goldenberg’s nightmarishly psychotic dissonance for “The Amazing Falsworth,” in which Gregory Hines’ professional psychic encounters a serial killer during his nightclub act; David Shire’s mixture of electronic music (created in collaboration with synthesist Craig Huxley) and orchestral motives to underscore “Moving Day,” a story about a boy’s first love being interrupted by the revelation that he is really an alien and must return to his home planet; Bruce Broughton’s Herrmannesque and homage-filled tribute to horror film fans, “Welcome to My Nightmare, while his score for “Thanksgiving” is a splendid and richly textured score for large orchestra with synth and choir to embellish the story of a mean recluse whose deep well-digging leads to an encounter with subterraneans. David Shire’s beautifully grandiose score for “Hell Toupee,” about a living toupee with a malevolent taste for lawyers, features some terrific action music in classic 1950s traditions heralds the toupee’s murderous rampage across the countryside. John Addison’s enchanting music for Joe Dante’s “The Greibble,” emphasizes the story’s Seuss-like characteristics with verve and lighthearted mischievousness. Leonard Rosenman’s score for “No Day On The Beach” is a serious wartime orchestral composition, setting the right tone for the episode’s sobering sensibility and poignancy. Thomas Newman’s score for “Santa ‘85” fuses traditional holiday instruments with what would become Newman’s penchant for modernistic minimalism – the perfect combination and contrast for this story of a modern boy who takes over when Santa is arrested, accused of burglarizing a home. Amazing Stories was a unique series for 1980s television, and its legacy of fully-orchestral scores has been a release I’ve been waiting a long time for.

Lifeforce

BSX released a stunning 2-disc set containing all of the music from Henry Mancini’s oft-neglected latter-day masterpiece, the score for Tobe Hooper’s apocalyptic adaptation of Colin Wilson’s The Space Vampires, Lifeforce. Eschewing the pop Breakfast At Tiffany’s/Days of Wine And Roses/Pink Panther vibe which made the composer a household name, Mancini returned to the roots he had honed in the 1950s as a staff composer at Universal, working on such treats as Tarantula, This Island Earth, and It Came From Outer Space. The resultant, large symphonic composition for Lifeforce reveals that Mancini had lost none of his affinity for the dramatic and the orchestrally epic, as his score is thunderously rhythmic and powerful, a massive end-of-the-world overture that is as potent and relentless as the lifeforce-sucking vampires of the film. The score appeared on LP, on CD in Japan, and on a couple of bootleg releases – this is its first completely overhauled and complete legit domestic release. Also included on the CD is the music Michael Kamen was asked to compose when the film – and its score – was ruthlessly manhandled by the myopic management of Cannon Films after Mancini had gone on to another project. [I got to write the notes for this release but my enthusiasm for the album is purely due to the terrific music collected within. My notes and purely supplemental.]

David Schecter and Kathleen Mayne of Monstrous Movie Music issued their latest two recordings after many years’ delay, to stimulating results. Mighty Joe Young and other Ray Harryhausen Animation Classics features premiere and significant newly-recorded suites from three significant fantasy films of the 1950s: for the first time we have virtually the entire Mighty Joe Young score by the extraordinarily under-appreciated Roy Webb, faithfully rerecorded by the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Slovakia. The music runs the gamut of vast adventure, including a wonderful theme introduced in the initial African sequences, the savagery of the ape’s power, emphasized by muscular brass chords, and straight-out attack scene dissonances, supporting the film’s mix of playfulness, pathos, poignancy, and power – plus the interpolation of the classic standard, “Beautiful Dreamer” (used in the film as a music box tune that calms the Konglike giant ape). Bakaleinikoff’s music for Harryhausen’s 1957 Venusian monster scuttling Rome movie, 20 Million Miles To Earth, dueling against plenty of re-used tracks from the Columbia Pictures music library, is terrific 1950s horror film music, raging with snarling low brass advancing monster-footsteps chords, furtive woodwind filigrees, swirling brass and percussion horror stingers, and the like. Bakaleinikoff’s “creature” theme becomes a ferocious ostinato accompanying the Ymir’s escape from captivity and attack upon the Roman landscape, while the recycled cues support various characteristics of suspense and monster-attacks. Paul Sawtell (The Fly, etc) composed the score for the lost 1956 Irwin Allen documentary, The Animal World, enhanced this examination of historical dinosaurs with the ferociously pulse-pounding music one might expect from a monster movie.

THIS ISLAND EARTH (And Other Alien Invasion Films)

Monstrous’ other release, This Island Earth and Other Alien Invasion Films proffers up a similarly attractive mix for 1950s science fiction films. More than half an hour of original music from Universal’s classic 1955 science fiction thriller, This Island Earth (composed, like so many of the studios genre pictures of the decade, by a collaboration of its music department – mostly Herman Stein with Hans Salter and Henry Mancini) is proffered for the first time. The music is thrillingly melodic, capturing both the malevolency of the Metaluna Mutants with a savage, snarling ostinato not unlike Stein’s shrieking Creature From The Black Lagoon motif, as well as a fair amount of meandering music associated with characters and the mysteriousness of the Metaluna planet and its environment. We also have 20 minutes of music from Ron Goodwin’s score to the fascinating but flawed 1962 adaptation of John Wyndham’s exercise in vegetative horror, The Day Of The Triffids. The score exemplifies Goodwin’s talent for rhythmic melody, developing a churning, rapid-fire motif that gave the film’s fearsome fauna a sense of movement and direction that they rarely exhibited on film; it’s an excellent score and appears here for the first time ever. Rounding out the collection is the Main Title cue from 1958’s War Of The Satellites, composed by Walter Greene), and Daniel Amfitheatrof’s title tune from 1956’s Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, both wonderfully and pulsatingly evocative opening tracks.

Classical music purveyor Naxos, which absorbed the notable series of Marco Polo film music restorations a few years ago, offered a splendid full recording of Benjamin Frankel’s masterful score for Hammer’s Curse Of The Werewolf (previously released only via short excerpted tracks on previous compilations). In a splendid new recording performed by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by film composer Carl Davis, Frankel’s 1959 score takes on a vigorous life as vibrant and bristling as any lycanthrope under the affect of the full moon. Released along with passages from the decidedly less severe dramas So Long At The Fair (1950), The Net (1953), and The Prisoner (no, not the McGoohan TV series, a 1955 Brit political drama), the score is challenging and effective, drawing melodic poignancy towards the afflicted Leon, afflicted by the titular condition. As with most scores of the era, the melodies are slight, with the emphasis more on briefer figures and moody motifs, although Frankel’s Finale remains one of the most powerful orchestral cues in Hammer’s horror history. Had Hammer chosen to develop the werewolf idiom as they did their Frankenstein, Dracula, or Mummy series, and Frankel scored them, he may have rivaled James Bernard and Don Banks as Hammer’s horror heavies.

Intrada salvaged one of Richard Band’s finest and most ambitious scores from oblivion late last year when they reissues the long out-of-print LP soundtrack to 1986’s Troll. The orchestral score is characterized by a provocative use of choir – the soundtrack album, in fact, rather than being a traditional collection of score cues, Band assembled the whole thing into five extended choral suites, allowing the music to play as an extended symphonic work. Troll is simply an astonishing score and characteristic of Band’s flagrant use of unfettered creativity even when restricted by the lowest of budgets. It is a beautifully textured mixture of orchestra, synths, and choir, built around layered and stirring rhythms that allow the music to crescendo and rest repeatedly. [see full review in last week’s Soundtrax column.]

Ennio Morricone’s hauntingly lovely score for the 1965 Italian horror film, Amanti D’oltretomba (Lovers Beyond the Tomb, but best known under its USA release title, Nightmare Castle; was one of many Italian scores given first rate expanded release on Italy’s GDM label. Morricone’s main melody is a sweepingly lovely violin line that represents the lovers and their former bliss, while the balance of the score comprises a series of unusual, awkward, and very frightening sustained musical evocations – organs, voice, interspersed violins and horn. Despite its occasional raucous moments, Nightmare Castle is a rare example of a true horror film from the Italian maestro, and its preservation in such form warrants praise.

Another release from GDM, Gli Scassinatori (aka The Burglars) preserves one of Morricone’s best pop-oriented scores from the 1970s, featuring a tuneful and rhythm-based musical approach that gave the film an enchantingly romantic and contemporary verve. A captivating main theme for piano and electric guitar over rhythm section and a rushing electronic tonality provided a catchy mood, while a gentle love theme for keyboard, winds, muted trumpet, and strings provided a lush accompaniment to the film’s romantic moments

FSM released the first-ever commercial recording of Bernard Herrmann’s compelling music for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man a wonderful, jazz-based film score. Henry Fonda’s character in Wrong Man is a string bass player in a jazz band, which set the tone for Herrmann’s musical approach, but – being Herrmann – the composer invests every note with dramatic intensity and cinematic meaning. The music is string bass heavy, of course, its thick, strident, and low percussive strums defining the propulsive, snappy sonority of the score’s mysteriosos. Herrmann’s minimalist approach to the music emphasized a small ensemble and a somber austerity in tonality - the dominant musical factor is one of dour disillusionment and hopelessness. The soft woodwind poignancy of the “Finale” is one of Herrmann’s most affecting compositions, a stark and reflective melancholia.

La-La-Land Records lavish 33-track recording of Akira Ifukube’s classic score for 1964’s King Kong Vs Godzilla preserves this rousing and aggressive horror-adventure score for the first time outside of Japan. While reprising many of the themes introduced in Ifukube’s original Gojira score, KKvG is an expansive recreation of them, including a wholly new main title theme featuring chorus and orchestra. The score is full of deep, groaning, echoing chords and textures, as if recorded in the very bowels of Godzilla himself; the score instantly suggests hugeness, darkness, and a growling malevolency. The composer’s orchestration is malignantly magnificent, every resource of the orchestra turned as dark and savage and aggressive as possible. An amazing and thrilling exercise in pure malevolent monster music.

From Italy’s other major soundtrack archivist, Digitmovies, comes the energetic pairing of Enzo Masetti’s classic scores for the first two Hercules films, starring Steve Reeves as the strongman Eurohero. Both scores, Le Fatiche Di Ercole (Hercules) and Ercole E La Regina De Lidia (Hercules Unchained) from 1957 and 1958 respectively, are excellent orchestral action/adventure scores; thematically rich, brooding and suspenseful, energetic and action-filled symphonic epics – or, to put it in Peplum terms: mighty melodic histrionics for massively muscle-bound heroics. These were composer Masetti’s last two scores before his death in 1961; culminating a career of more than 60 scores, these two have perhaps become the archetypal scores for Italian Peplum, and are the perfect introduction to this new series.

The late Michael Small remains one of the most unsung composers within the film music pantheon of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, although unfortunately he never achieved the kind of popular recognition many of his colleagues did. Intrada’s Special Collection Vol. 29 has very nicely premiered Small’s fine score to Bob Rafelson’s stylish 1987 thriller, Black Widow on CD. Small’s score characteristically shuns broad melodies and transcendent leitmotifs in favor of more concise figures and introspective musical collectives to create instead an intensive psychological-based underscore. Small had a terrific affinity for discovering the psychological core of a character’s or a storyline’s essence, and was able to emphasize that through the carefully realized implementation of tone, nuance, texture, and counterpoint, while maintaining a tonality that is as romantic and as sensual as Winger’s suppressed yearnings and Rafelson’s sleek and suggestive directing style.

Perseverance Records has issues the first-ever soundtrack release of one of the most unique horror scores I’ve ever heard – Phillip Lambro’s complicated textures and tonalities for 1973’s Crypt Of The Living Dead (aka Young Hannah: Queen Of The Vampires). This mishmash of an unfinished Spanish horror movie filmed in Turkey completed by an American company filming in Malibu (!) featured a stunningly horrific musical score. One of a handful of scores composed by classical composer Lambro, Crypt is a mesmerizingly chilling, aggressively atonal score that creates some of the most haunting and disturbingly frightening sounds you’ll ever hear in any horror film. Lambro developing a musical fabric that joins together an assortment of carefully stitched sound textures that, using sound design rather than melodies, create the motifs that create the score. Listening to the CD isn’t a totally fun experience, but it’s an amazing example of the power of music to, truly and ruthlessly entirely on its own, develop a sensation of suspense and foreboding and true cinematic horror. I suggest leaving the lights on. [Disclaimer: I had the opportunity to write the notes for this CD release – but my enthusiasm for the score goes far beyond that momentary association.]

Ronald Stein’s superb low-budget score to the wild and wacky Dinosaurus!, Irwin S. Yeaworth’s 1960 resurrected dinosaur movie, unleashed a wonderfully massive sense of proportion despite employing a fairly small orchestra. Carefully orchestrated to sound larger than it was, Stein’s orchestra achieves a terrific dynamic and gives the film’s oversized monsters much of their cinematic life. The score is appropriate to the film’s diversity of beasts, while derived from the same main theme. Low, growling brasses abound aggressively for the T-Rex; a more benign variation for softer horns and tuba with a fairly jaunty rhythm reflect the brontosaurus’ friendship with the boy Julio; and an appropriate comic tone supports Gregg Martell’s wonderful performance as the awakened Neanderthal Man, given voice through Stein’s curious woodwinds and pizzicato strings. Dinosaurus! is a dynamo of a movie score that packs a tremendous power in its small size. It’s an excellent example of Stein’s ability to create more out of less and provide a larger than life score for the smallest of budgets.

Lee Harline’s diversified score for George Pal’s final directorial effort, 1964’s provocative fantasy, 7 Faces Of Dr. Lao (1964), found new life from Film Score Monthly in a splendid release of the film’s complete score. Harline provided a jaunty Americana Western mood from guitar-and-harmonica, which nicely set the stage for the film’s rural setting. When Dr. Lao’s circus materializes just outside of town, the same theme takes on a decidedly Oriental flavoring when Harline rephrases it from Chinese instruments. From there, Harline’s score takes off, Hydra-like, into a variety of guises and variations, each however linked to its trunk by recurring variants of the main theme. Harline seldom utilizes the full orchestra all at once, instead achieving a variety of musical textures through small ensembles appropriate for each segment. Many of the leitmotifs recur later in the film, associated with the changes made in the townsfolk as a result of having experienced Dr. Lao’s circus. Harline’s persuasive score, full of tender cheer and profound intimacy, was among the finest of his career.

Recommended Soundtrack sources:

www.buysoundtrax.com

www.intrada.com

www.screenarchives.com

www.footlight.com

www.arksquare.com/index_main.html (Japan)

www.intermezzomedia.com/ (Italy)

www.moviegrooves.com

www.moviemusic.com