SWASHBUCKLERS: SWORDSMEN OF THE SILVER SCREEN

VARIOUS

Rating:

Original Review: One thing is obvious with this, the third of Silva Screen's recent releases: Pirate Music is brilliant! Composers like the immortal Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Miklós Rózsa vie with modern greats like James Horner and John Williams and comparative unknowns such as John DuPrez and Geoffrey Burgon in this wonderful compilation of all the greatest music from swashbuckler films. The main highlights are the quartet of scores from the brilliant Korngold - Captain Blood, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Sea Hawk - all of which, although admittedly rather similar in style, are great to listen to: great, rousing battle scenes, brass fanfares, touching string love themes and so on and so forth. In actual fact, these three elements make up just about every track here (there isn't a lot of variety in pirate music) but it was Korngold who set the precedent back in the 1930s. There are some other great tracks too, like Howard Blake's 8-minute suite from The Duellists, which contains a slightly more sombre but still brilliant main theme march; John Barry's pastoral, mellow theme from Robin and Marian; Alfred Newman's Latin-influenced The Mark of Zorro, Rózsa's engaging, exciting suite from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad; John DuPrez's brilliant overture from the film Monty Python's The Meaning of Life which, although it was written for a comedy skit entitled The Crimson Permanent Assurance, has a kind of strength and beauty to it, defying its amusing roots. My favourite of all, however, is John Debney's absolutely marvellous, rousing theme from Cutthroat Island. Oh, and it just struck me that Elmer Bernstein's suite from The Buccaneers sounds like an unlikely combination of The Twelve Days of Christmas and Hail To The King! The City of Prague Philharmonic perform admirably again for the most part, under the able batons of Nic Raine and Kenneth Alwyn, although a couple of performances, most notably Hook and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, do sound a bit lacklustre, and unfortunately the rendition of James Horner's theme for Willow does get rather mangled in places, especially when the shakuhachi elements come into play.

Track Listing:

DISK ONE DISK TWO Running Time: 103 minutes 38 seconds

Silva Screen FILMXCD-188 (1997)

Conducted by Paul Bateman, Nic Raine, Kenneth Alwyn, David Snell and Geoffrey Burgon. Performed by The City of Prague Philharmonic and The Crouch End Festival Chorus. Orchestrations by Ray Heindorf, Hugo Friedhofer, Milan Roder, Mark McGurty, Philip Lane, Geoffrey Burgon, Nic Raine, Howard Blake, Leo Shuken, Jack Hayes, Murray Cutter, Eric Andre, Bernard Herrmann and Brad Dechter. Recorded and mixed by John L. Timperley. Mastered by Matthew Dilley, Gareth Williams and Ian Shepherd. Album produced by James Fitzpatrick.


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These web pages were designed and maintained by Jonathan Broxton copyright 1997. All opinions and views expressed on these pages are my own and are in no way intended to reflect those of my employer, the Trent Institute for Health Services Research, or those of the University of Sheffield.