Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Charles Gerhardt Redux (1972/2010)


I’m sure I don’t have to tell most of you that the entire Charles Gerhardt RCA recordings were re-mastered and re-released over the last couple of years. As someone who owns the entire collection on CD, it’s difficult for me to know where to begin in terms of a recommendation on the new series. As you well know, one of the downsides of the digital era has been the incessant repackaging of existing media, if not to a different format to a newly “re-mastered” presentation, the addition of bonus tracks, or anything else that justifies reselling the same material over and over again--usually to the same customers.

In the end I’d have to say my decision would be not to update my current discs. I decided to purchase the Bogart and Flynn sets, as those are my two favorites, just to see how much of a difference there is. To my ears it wasn’t enough. In the first place, anyone who has the sets knows the superior quality of the Gerhardt recordings from the outset. You just have to listen to the only other recording of the Casablanca suite from The Longest Day compilation by Silva Screen to understand how impeccable those early recordings were and, in my opinion, have yet to be surpassed. And . . . although I know this has nothing to do with the music, the new packaging by Sony is pretty lame.

Back in 1972, the first album recorded by Gerhardt and the National Philharmonic Orchestra was The Sea Hawk: The Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Now, there were two different versions of this LP, one with extended versions of some suites and the elimination of some of the shorter tracks, like the main title to Captain Blood. What I’ve done below is to list the rest of the re-releases with a link to the original CD versions directly after. For those of you who haven’t experienced Gerhard’s work, these are must have discs, the cornerstone to any serious film score collection:

The Sea Hawk – The Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Remastered)
The Sea Hawk – Original Version
The Sea Hawk – Extended Version

Gone With the Wind – Max Steiner (Remastered)
Gone With the Wind – Original Version

Captain from Castile – The Classic Film Scores of Alfred Newman (Remastered)
Captain from Castile – Original Version

Casablanca – Classic Film Scores for Humphrey Bogart (Remastered)
Casablanca – Original Version

Lost Horizon – The Classic Film Scores of Dimitri Tiomkin (Remastered)
Lost Horizon – Original Version

Captain Blood – Classic Film Scores for Errol Flynn (Remastered)
Captain Blood – Original Version

Citizen Kane - The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Herrmann (Remastered)
Citizen Kane – Original Version

Sunset Boulevard - The Classic Film Scores of Franz Waxman (Remastered)
Sunset Boulevard – Original Version

Elizabeth and Essex - The Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Remastered)
Elizabeth and Essex – Original Version

Spellbound - The Classic Film Scores of Miklos Rozsa (Remastered)
Spellbound – Original Version

Now, Voyager - The Classic Film Scores of Max Steiner (Remastered)
Now, Voyager – Original Version

Classic Film Scores for Bette Davis (Remastered)
Classic Film Scores for Bette Davis – Original Version

Laura - David Raksin Conducts His Great Film Scores (Remastered)
Laura – David Raksin, Original Version

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Nosferatu (1922/1998)


The death of James Bernard in 2001 ended not only a brilliant career in music composition for film, but what could have amounted to an equally brilliant second career after composing this new score for Friedrich Murnau’s Nosferatu in 1998. Now, the primary composer for a series of silent films on the BBC's Channel 4 has been Carl Davis, whose score for Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera is so perfect that it’s better than the original. What if Bernard had lived and been able to score more films in the BBC series, silents like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Hands of Orlac, Faust, or even more tantalizing, a score for Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr? If his results on Nosferatu are any indication, it would have been magnificent.

One frequently repeated myth is that there were never scores composed specifically for silent films. Not so. Many later silent films--especially the big-budget films--had scores specially commissioned for them and orchestrated for any number of instrumentations. The same score often was written out for orchestra, small bands, and even solo piano or organ, so that it could be played in venues of all different sizes. (The book Film Music by Roy M. Prendergast is an excellent resource on this point.) And, in fact, Nosferatu had a score written specially for it by Hans Erdmann. Now, unfortunately, that "original" score was mostly lost. What fragments that remained were pieced together and filled out with Erdmann's other film music for a Nosferatu score on RCA conducted by Gillian B. Anderson. The same thing was done with Giuseppe Becce's fragments for Cabinet of Dr. Caligari on Koch, and both are worth seeking out.

Ironically, with all of the numerous versions of the actual film on DVD finding the best overall copy of Nosferatu remains problematic. The Image Entertainment and Kino International versions contain by far the best visuals of the film itself with completely restored footage and appropriate color tinting; unfortunately the titles are not as good as other versions and the Kino is accompanied by the worst soundtrack of any version available. Far and away the best soundtrack is on the Kartes Video Classics VHS version which is no longer in print, but a treasure if found used--though the titles have been changed to Dracula, and it suffers from a poor black-and-white transfer of the film which can be a strain to watch at times. For an in-depth comparison of the DVD editions check out Gary Johnson's article in Images Journal.

For fans of Bernard's work on the Hammer films his Nosferatu is a must have. Far more mature and interesting than some of his earlier work, it nonetheless retains the elements that made his scores so exciting in the first place. I would rank it among his best work in the genre. Unfortunately, though it’s been almost fifteen years since the score was written, it still hasn’t been released on DVD in the United States. The only issue with Bernard’s score is a PAL version, a 10-minute snippet of which was posted on YouTube several years ago but now appears to be gone. It’s a shame, because it’s certainly the definitive version with the Bernard score.

Monday, December 3, 2012

Dial "H" for Hitchcock

Though I’m certain the music on these two discs have been repackaged many times by now, they are still my favorite two discs of music from the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Each disc has a great collection of main titles and extended suites of classic Hitchcock music performed by the City of Prague Philharmonic. The first is Dial M for Murder: A History of Hitchcock, which I informally refer to as the later film's disc. While it does contain the title track by Dmitri Tiomkin and some earlier pieces from the films Suspicion and Spellbound, on the whole it is concerned mostly with the films from the fifties and later. This disc also begins with the Charles Gounod’s “Funeral March of the Marionettes” which was used as the theme song for the TV program Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Great suites from Rebecca, North by Northwest, Marnie and Vertigo round out the proceedings, which also include the single best suite from Psycho that I’ve ever heard.

The second disc, like the first put out by Silva America, is titled To Catch a Thief: A History of Hitchcock II, and delivers more of the same. This time, however, I feel that the emphasis is more on early works, especially from Hitch’s British period, which include The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes. But the reality is it’s just as broad a mix, with suites that include Strangers on a Train, Lifeboat and The Trouble with Harry, as well as the title track. As with any collection like this, however, there are going to be glaring omissions. This, however, can be remedied by the addition of two other discs which I would like to tell you about.

The first is a set of four wonderfully extended suites of music, one of them not included on the two discs mentioned above. It is titled Digital Premier Recordings from the Films of Alfred Hitchcock and recorded by the Utah Symphony Orchestra. What is contained on this German disc by Colosseum is the only newly recorded suite for Notorious, by Roy Webb. In addition there are suites for Strangers on a Train and Suspicion that are much longer that their counterparts on the Silva discs, as well as what I think is the superior version of the end credits from John Williams' Family Plot.

The second disc was recorded by Lalo Schifrin with the San Diego Symphony Pops Orchestra. It’s called Hitchcock, Master of Mayhem, and contains the best suite from Franz Waxman's Rear Window on record. The other Hitchcock suites are less memorable than those on the Silva discs, but it also includes some Schifrin gems like a Dirty Harry suite and an opening theme from Bullitt that is better than the original. All in all, these four discs provide the best Hitchcock themes that are currently available and have my highest recommendation. Enjoy.