Audio Watchdog By Douglas E. Winter
Tribute Film Classics
Early in 2007, John Morgan and William Stromberg announced their new record label, Trib- ute Film Classics, whose goal was to carry on the ambitious cycle of film score restoration and re- vival that began with their reconstruction of music for the Golden Age compilations CAPTAIN BLOOD (Marco Polo 8.223607, 1994) and HISTORICAL RO- MANCES (Marco Polo 8.223608, 1994) and con- tinued for more than 30 discs on Marco Polo and Naxos. The new label (founded with Stromberg’s wife, Anna Bonn) is devoted to the gorgeous and insistently complete recordings that are now trade- marks of the Morgan/Stromberg collaboration. TFC’s promise has been confirmed by its first re- leases: painstaking reconstructions of the “de- finitive editions” of the Bernard Herrmann scores for MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961; TFC-1001, $19.98, 61 tracks, 71m 27s) and FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966; TFC-1002, $19.98, 55 tracks, 77m 40s) in sonically superb digital recordings by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra.
Working from admittedly poor copies of Herrmann’s original scores (including a FAHR- ENHEIT 451 score that he’d literally cut and pasted into a suite for his 1974 Decca re-recording) and using Herrmann’s intended instrumentation (re- storing xylophone, marimba, and harp parts re- portedly cut from that score at François Truffaut’s insistence), Morgan and Stromberg give us the first fully realized versions of these masterful yet diverse musical adventures.
“Bravura” is the word for MYSTERIOUS IS-LAND, the third and perhaps most influential of Herrmann’s Harryhausen scores, as the Maestro conjures a full orchestral assault that defined the supernatural epic for future generations. The cues weave menace with melancholy and mys- ticism, circling on the fierce main title (“Prelude”) while spanning the instrumental spectrum with characteristic complexity: although Herrmann famously claimed that his favorite orchestral combination was string orchestra and vibra- phone, he knew when to unleash brass, wood- winds, keyboards, electronics and, most of all, percussion.
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FAHRENHEIT 451 is a perfect counterpoint— a score that abandons the vast and aggressive soundscapes of MYSTERIOUS ISLAND in favor of more intimate cues steeped in a shivery ro- manticism. Composed in the aftermath of Herrmann’s rift with Alfred Hitchcock over the music for TORN CURTAIN, this score eschewed avant-garde classicism, the supposed “music of the future” as practiced by Truffaut’s friends Boulez and Stockhausen, in favor of what Herrmann called a “great lyrical simplicity.” Per- formed by that favorite string orchestra and vibraphone (plus harps and glockenspiel), FAHR- ENHEIT 451 echoes elements of PSYCHO while prefiguring the compositions of John Adams, Brian Eno, and Philip Glass—and thus the real music of the future; its moving final cues re- main simply unforgettable. And there’s more: TFC had the wisdom and extravagance to ap- pend a 13m+ re-recording of Herrmann’s achingly nostalgic music for the TWILIGHT ZONE episode “Walking Distance” (1959), which shares the tone and mood of FAHREN- HEIT 451—and in a gambit inspired by Samuel Barber, Morgan and Stromberg expand the origi- nal string ensemble instrumentation into a full orchestra.
The documentation for both scores is elabo- rate, with 32-page full-color booklets featuring a bounty of photographs; memoirs from Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen, Christopher Young, and other Herrmann enthusiasts; insights into each project by the TFC founders; and illumi- nating liner notes from composer/conductor Kevin Scott. Fortunately, reviewing isn’t of- ten about picking favorites; both discs are the type you want to keep playing and playing... at least until the next TFC release, which looks to be Herrmann’s scores for THE KENTUCKIAN (1955) and WILLIAMSBURG—THE STORY OF A PATRIOT (1957).
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