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Conducted by:
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Cliff Eidelman
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Performed by:
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The Royal Scottish National Orchestra
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Produced by:
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Robert Townson
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Release Date:
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October 15th, 1996
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Availability:
Regular U.S. release.
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you want to hear superior performances of the best and
most interesting cues from the first three Alien scores.
Avoid it... if Alien-related music has never interested you
in its tendencies towards drab atonality.
Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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| | Eidelman | |
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The Alien Trilogy: (Compilation) In the mid-1990's,
the Varèse Sarabande label began contracting the services of the
Royal Scottish National Orchestra for performances of famous film
scores. Some of these recordings would come from the wand of the
original composer, such as the much revered recordings of film music by
Jerry Goldsmith. Others would feature the conducting of famous score
themes by the likes of Joel McNeely, Frederic Talgorn, or Cliff
Eidelman, all of whom are capable composers themselves who were arguably
at the collective height of their careers at the time. One compilation
conducted by Eidelman (whose film composition career had already begun
to languish by then) was a relatively early RSNO/Varèse set of
performances from the first three Alien films. It remains bit odd
to fathom that Robert Townson and Varèse engineered this project
with the fourth film of the franchise advertised to be just around the
corner, but given the poor quality of the fourth score in the series,
not much was likely lost. As it stands, the "Alien Trilogy" album
features the musical journey of Ellen Ripley throughout her dismal
encounters with the alien species, and it isn't the most pleasant of
listening experiences. The process of scoring the first film in the
franchise wasn't pleasant for veteran composer Jerry Goldsmith either.
Despite the immense qualifications that Goldsmith brought to the
process, second-time director Ridley Scott decided to temp the movie
with previous Goldsmith works, creating odd and unreasonable
expectations for the composer to meet. In the end, Goldsmith wrote a
score that wasn't what Scott wanted, and the director threw much of it
out or otherwise mutilated it and inserted cues in improper places. As
fans of the composer well know, Scott purchased the rights to the score
for Goldsmith's Freud, as well as a handful of
classically-oriented works, and placed these over several scenes that
Goldsmith had scored. Other cues were simply dropped in favor of layers
of sound effects. In the end, Goldsmith was understandably outraged, and
through the years did his best to ensure that his original version of
the score would be preserved on album. For this compilation, Eidelman
and others painstakingly recreated Goldsmith's work as it was intended,
providing several cues here that don't appear in the film.
That doesn't necessarily mean that Goldsmith's score,
despite its effectiveness in the few portions of the film where it was
allowed to flourish, is readily enjoyable. Many longtime collectors of
Goldsmith's scores shun Alien, partly because it was never used
well in the film, and partially because it's largely unlistenable
outside of the final cue. It has much of the same effect on people as
Goldsmith's somewhat concurrent Outland, with a drab, dissonant
score for a gray, hopeless future in space finished by one somewhat
tonal thematic performance at the end. This compilation focuses mainly
on Goldsmith's work, and the presentation is excellent regardless of
tolerability. The cues from James Horner's score for Aliens are
more accessible on CD, as they always have been in comparison to
Alien. Horner extended the four-note "time" motif from
Goldsmith's score into an opening titles sequence not much unlike
Goldsmith's. But where Horner excels is in his action music; some
listeners see little difference between the propulsive, snare-driven
action here and that of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and in
Horner's world of recycling sounds that work, those people would be
correct. Nevertheless, his adaptation of that material is far more
brutal here, and rips up a storm with brass and piccolo that is well
captured by the RSNO. The three cues from Alien 3 represent the
opening and closing of the film and one horror cut from the middle
portions. The Elliot Goldenthal score is a "love it or hate it" event,
and no matter where you stand on that debate, everyone agrees that it is
a significant departure from the approaches of Goldsmith and Horner. As
he tends to do, Goldenthal over-intellectualizes the score, inserting a
purely classical, operatic, and religious element into a film that never
called for that kind of elegance, even in its sacrificial finale.
Goldenthal's adagio and related neo-classical ideas do, however, offer
ironically the most easily listenable music on this compilation in their
rather simplistic beauty. The horror cue in the middle of this suite is
completely intolerable in true Goldenthal experimental fashion, showing
that the composer was incapable of finding a completely effective middle
ground between horror and romanticism. Overall, however, the
performances on the album are nearly flawless and represent a fantastic
job of coordination and execution by the producers and conductor. Even
as Alien-related films continue to be released, this collection
from the first three scores is worthy of attention from any fan of the
series. ****
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Viewer Ratings and Comments:
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Alien: (Jerry Goldsmith)
• 1. Main Title (3:16)
• 2. Hyper Sleep (2:45)
• 3. The Landing (4:33)
• 4. Breakaway (3:11)
• 5. The Droid (3:46)
• 6. The Door (1:28)
• 7. End Title (3:27)
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Aliens: (James Horner)
• 8. Main Title (6:21)
• 9. Futile Escape (5:45)
• 10. Bishop's Countdown (3:21)
Alien 3: (Elliot Goldenthal)
• 11. Lento (5:23)
• 12. Candles in the Wind (4:16)
• 13. Adagio (4:15)
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The insert notes are in great depth. They reveal behind-the-scenes stories
about the scores and films, inccluding the story about Goldsmith's furious battle
over Alien.
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