The booming market for film soundtracks, original scores and compilations, has ensured that most recent movies with a half-way decent score will release the soundtrack. It has not always been this way, and just as hundreds of notable movies of an earlier vintage have been passed over for video release, many fine scores from older movies have never been made available on disc.
Among the enterprising operations which have made strides towards remedying that anomalous situation are the Irish company, Scannan Film Classics, and the British record label, Silva Screen, both of whom have enlisted the skills of the City of Prague Philharmonic to re-record some outstanding film music.
Based in Wicklow, Scannan Film Classics is the brainchild of Joe Doherty, a passionate admirer and collector of film music. His first project was The Quiet Man in 1995 - the first complete recording of Victor Young's original score for John Ford's hugely entertaining 1951 movie starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara.
The most stirring of the three scores composed by Young for Ford films, the music for The Quiet Man is faithfully and affectionately re-captured by the Dublin Screen Orchestra, conducted by Kenneth Alwyn, on this 16-track CD. Joe Doherty was both executive producer and compiler of the useful 12-page booklet which accompanies it. The album brings a clarity and richness to Young's engaging score which incorporates such popular tunes as The Isle Of Innisfree, Galway Bay and I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen.
Doherty's second project for Scannan Film Classics is altogether more ambitious. The Flame And The Arrow is a lovingly treated tribute to the ability and versatility of one of cinema's most prolific composers, Max Steiner, who emigrated from Vienna to the US in 1929 and went on to write the scores for over 300 films, most famously for Gone With The Wind, Casablanca, The Informer and King Kong.
The Scannan CD omits those themes in favour of rarer material drawn from Steiner's output for Warner Bros - 24 tracks from 12 films. The album takes its title from Jacques Tourneur's highly entertaining 1950 swashbuckling adventure, The Flame And The Arrow, which starred Burt Lancaster and is featured on the CD in a four-part suite, which begins with the Warner Bros fanfare leading into the vigorous main title music.
Of the 12 soundtracks featured on the CD, only two have been recorded in the past, and even then only partially - Johnny Belinda and the lilting Now Voyager score, which brought Max Steiner one of his three Oscars (from a total of 22 nominations). All of the music is superbly performed by the City of Prague Philharmonic under conductor Kenneth Alwyn.
The highlights of the album also include Steiner's swelling title music for Michael Curtiz's Joan Crawford vehicle, Mildred Pierce, along with the deceptively simple score for The Dark At The Top Of The Stairs, the busy scene-setting opening to The FBI Story, and the evocative main title music for Parrish.
The Flame And The Arrow is distributed through Silva Screen, the label which has itself broken new ground with its film scores in recent years. Silva's latest release is arguably their most cherish-able to date - Zulu, a double CD and 24-carat gem devoted to the music of John Barry. The highpoint is the 20-minute suite of music from Barry's epic score for the 1964 film, Zulu - a thrilling theme performed with panache by the Prague Philharmonic.
The compilation also features such enduring themes as Barry's compositions for Midnight Cowboy, The Last Valley, Hammett and The Cotton Club, along with some scores which were far more interesting than the movies they accompanied - The Tamarind Seed, The Specialist and The Deep - and Barry's great, Oscar-winning music for Dances With Wolves, which marked his comeback after a serious illness earlier this decade. And as a bonus there's Barry's lush, summery The Girl With The Sun In Her Hair, which originated as a commercial for Sunsilk shampoo.
Also from Silva Screen is Cinema's Classic Romances, which includes such joys as Nino Rota's music for Romeo And Juliet, Gabriel Yared's score for The English Patient, Patrick Doyle's compositions for Kenneth Branagh's films of Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing, and best of all, Trevor Jones's music for Michael Mann's The Last Of The Mohicans.
Silva's other notable recent releases include the double CD, The Essential James Horner Film Music Collection, which - inevitably - includes material from Horner's Oscar-winning music for Titanic. There's also his robust scores for Glory, Ransom, Braveheart and one of his first commissions, Jimmy Murakami's Battle Beyond The Stars, along with Horner's more subdued score for Cocoon and the gorgeous music from Field Of Dreams.
Tune in, close your eyes and let the movies replay in your mind.
