My favorite film score of all time would have to be Erich Wolfgang Korngold's rousing music for the 1935 Warner Brothers Errol Flynn vehicle, Captain Blood. In fact, the first film score CD I ever purchased was the Charles Gerhardt Captain Blood: Scores for Errol Flynn. But, as anyone who has this disc knows, the one cue for the film is actually "Ship in the Night," not the main theme. So, to obtain the overture I next proceeded to Gerhardt's best-of disc which claimed on the back tray to have the overture for Captain Blood but, to my extreme disappointment, it was the same "Ship in the Night" cue. It wasn't until years later that by complete accident I stumbled upon the actual main title cue.
When I first went to purchase Gerhardt's disc of Korngold's the Sea Hawk there were two choices available, one with extended suites that I had already heard from a copy at the public library. And since the disc with the shorter suites simply stated only the Captain Blood main theme on the back insert, I naturally assumed it would be the same mistakenly labeled cue as on the other two discs. When I finally purchased a cheap version on eBay of the shorter Sea Hawk disc years later--in my quest to obtain the complete Gerhardt recordings--I was stunned and amazed to finally have procured the Gerhardt version of the Captain Blood overture. It is still the greatest, ever, as are all of the Gerhardt recordings.
Later recordings of Captain Blood have proven uniformly disappointing, including the Andre Previn cues on Deutsche Gramaphon which which are a bit lifeless. But the worst is the Marco Polo/Naxos cues by the Brandenberg Philharmonic which are downright pondering. What I eventually did was create my own suite using the best of the tracks that could be had from all three sources. Because of the disparate sources there is some redundancy, but I think it works well anyway.
On the flip side, there are also the only four cues available from the actual Captain Blood soundtrack recordings that appeared on the Korngold 2-CD set of his Warner Brothers years. This is is a much smaller suite but, short of going the Soundtrack Factory route, the only way to get the isolated original music Captain Blood soundtrack. As one of the great, rousing scores for a film that would begin the illustrious careers of both Flynn and Korngold, Captain Blood will forever remain a classic, one of my favorite films of all time.
No comments:
Post a Comment