KORNGOLD: Music from "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex." Munich Symphony Orchestra, Carl Davis conducting. Bay Cities BCD-3026 .
To my knowledge, this is the first in the growing pantheon of complete (or virtually so) Korngold film-score recordings not to come from Varese Sarabande, which has already given us "Kings Row," "Anthony Adverse" and, with the Utah Symphony, "The Sea Hawk" and "The Adventures of Robin Hood."
This time the entrant is Bay Cities, which weighs in impressively with "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex," certainly in the upper echelon of Korngold movie scores. It is also one of the few to be lavished on a film whose subject matter comes close to the stature of the music.
In this case that was Maxwell Anderson's play "Elizabeth the Queen," retitled to accord Errol Flynn equal prominence with co-star Bette Davis and almost certainly to draw parallels with Charles Laughton's Oscar-winning "The Private Life of Henry VIII."
Korngold's response was a score whose romantic sweep links it with the swashbucklers for which he and Flynn had become famous, only with a heightened sense of pageantry and impending tragedy.
For the pageantry, I still recommend Charles' Gerhardt's recording of the Overture (composed for the premiere and not heard in the film), included on his RCA CD "Elizabeth and Essex." Davis, however, conducts with comparable sweep and proves if anything even more sensitive to the music's emotional undercurrents. Witness his heart-rending treatment of the love theme and the militant foreboding of the Irish campaign.
He also offers nearly 66 minutes of it, as opposed to 7 for the Overture. And although the latter compresses things remarkably well, it cannot encompass the full dimensions of the score - together with "Anthony Adverse," perhaps Korngold's most operatic - or the varied riches of the orchestration.
HOLLYWOOD SCREEN CLASSICS: Music of Korngold, North, Rozsa, Steiner, Young etc. National Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Gerhardt conducting. Chesky CD-71 .
I have been wondering when the folks at Chesky would turn their attention to some of the film music contained in the Reader's Digest catalog they have mined so profitably in the past.
Here at last is a CD that gathers together some of the early Charles Gerhardt recordings (drawn mostly from the four-LP set "Great Music From the Movies") that would prove a run-up to his "Classic Film Scores" series for RCA. (Indeed, some of those actually came from these sessions.)
And while it may look as if the most substantial offerings - a 7-minute "Kings Row" suite and a 23-minute suite from "Gone With the Wind" - have been superseded by his own more complete recordings, well, all I can say is that this is still my favorite recording of the "Kings Row" selections, with an impact the Varese Sarabande CD cannot match.
What's more, this is closest I have heard anyone come to recapturing the sheer sound of those Reader's Digest LPs, here transferred with nearly all its incredible body and detail intact.
That is not true of the "Gone With the Wind" music, where it is the later RCA recording that packs more punch. Otherwise this CD also offers lusher, mood-music-type arrangements of themes from "East of Eden," "Laura" and "Three Coins in the Fountain" among others, along with the underrated Victor Young's own concert setting of "The Call of the Faraway Hills" from "Shane."
FARNON: Music from "Captain Horatio Hornblower"; Intermezzo for Harp and Strings; Rhapsody for Violin & Orchestra etc. Raymond Cohen, violin; Aline Brewer, harp; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Robert Farnon & Douglas Gamley conducting. Reference RR-47CD .
Mood music never had a better friend than Robert Farnon, whose tastefully imaginative arrangements and original compositions were among the best the genre was treated to in the '40s, '50s and '60s.
Now, in all-new digital recordings that display their customary spaciousness, Reference devotes an entire CD to Farnon's more serious side, including what is perhaps his best-known film score, for "Captain Horatio Hornblower."
Occasionally I miss the spirit and gusto he brought to this music on an earlier Citidel LP. Here by comparison the battle music seems a trifle laid-back. But the broad lyrical melodies soar atmospherically, both here and in two of his "Canadian Impressions," "A la Claire Fontaine" and "Lake of the Woods."
And while the Violin Rhapsody was likewise more incisive there, I prefer the newer recording's more natural concert perspective, especially given this hauntingly evocative work's greater substance. Indeed, this is music of Korn-goldian quality, though the debt is more to Bartok or maybe even