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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you only have casual interest in Alan Silvestri's fantastic music for the trilogy and seek robust re-recordings of highlights from the first two entries. Avoid it... if you're enough of a fan of the scores that John Debney's significantly slower tempos in conducting them will overshadow the benefit of the monumentally fuller sound of the recording. Original Review, by Christian Clemmensen
The compilation serves as a sort of bus tour of Silvestri's contributions to the series, and its pacing can sometimes leave you wanting more. The CD features over twenty minutes from the original film, under fifteen minutes from both the sequels, and the four-minute ride score. More important to remember, though, is that beyond the newfound availability of the original score on CD, with several previously unreleased cues, you have the perk of hearing this extremely dynamic music performed by a larger ensemble and recorded in brilliant digital sound. If any trilogy of music has begged through the years for this kind of treatment, it's this one. Debney and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra had collaborated with Varèse to produce several recordings of note in 1998 and 1999, including those for Superman and Amazing Stories, both receiving wide-spread critical praise. Promised to film music enthusiasts more than a year before its release, the Back to the Future re-recordings languished in an agonizing production flux, and with the delay and several other factors, the album unfortunately never lived up to the hype. Whether criticism aimed at this compilation is warranted or not depends largely on your ability to forgive Debney for his somewhat inaccurate interpretations of the original material in order to hear it performed in such great quality and size. For casual listeners, it's simply great to hear the original Back to the Future score performed in such a lively soundscape. The weakness of that score has always been its somewhat undersized stature, though everyone would probably agree that Silvestri made up for the diminished grandeur with the pure energy and enthusiasm of his composition. If you haven't heard any of the original recordings in quite some time, then you won't notice the differences, and the performance itself is absent of errors until you reach the final cue for the ride. For the extreme enthusiasts of these scores, though, the performances of the RSNO will be marginally adequate, if not slow and lacking sufficient energy in a few parts, due to the plenty of interpretive liberties taken by Debney. It's a case where tempo can make all the difference, and Debney seems to have taken the stance that the score can withstand some slower pacing due to its heftier size here. Some of that is a perception issue as well; since the size of the ensemble is accompanied by a significant level of reverberation, the highly precise staccato movements of Silvestri's composition can seemed washed out. The resulting bold edge to the performance causes some of the frenetic energy from the originals to be lost, and only in the suite from the ride's re-arrangement score do the quick tempos of the original film scores surface. Most fans will point to the "Clock Tower" cues as suffering the most from this slower pacing. While Debney seems to handle the primary, heroic, fanfare part of the title theme relatively well, the suspenseful interlude, which could very well be more famous due to its instantly recognizable opening three notes, is often left dragging its feet amongst the trombones. The selections from Back to the Future, Part II are much of the same, as the original is largely simply an extension of the first score. An alternate take in "The Letter" is a pleasant surprise and the previously unreleased music for "The West," Silvestri's trailer of sorts for the third film (tacked onto the end of the second one) is performed with outstanding resonance. Given how well Debney seemingly handled the teaser for Back to the Future, Part III makes Varèse's decision to include only a handful of original cues from that film a bit of a disappointment. Owners of the third score on CD will find this section useless. Debney's take on the "Point of No Return" cue alone could have redeemed this album for skeptics. The music from the ride is a decent sampling of the themes from all three films, and it borrows some enjoyable ideas from Silvestri's Predator score in the latter half, though it ends on a very sudden and unsatisfying note. Overall, this compilation may not really satisfy the musical needs of the trilogy's fans. It's fantastic for casual film score listeners, though without the crucial songs from the first film and with tempo issues in the re-recordings, it fails to serve as the ultimate in Back to the Future albums. ****
Review #2, by Todd China
The Back to the Future Trilogy: (Alan Silvestri) Varese Sarabande's re-recording of the Back to the Future Trilogy is one of the most frustrating film score albums I have ever bought. One only has to listen to the eleven minutes of music on the MCA original album to realize the utter and abject inferiority of John Debney's interpretation. The tempos are all horribly inaccurate. The main theme is noticeably slower, and the syncopated trombones in the middle section sound completely flat and lifeless, as if Debney and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra didn't know the meaning of the word "staccato." On their website, Varese advertised this release with the promise that we would finally get the exciting and heroic "Skateboard Chase" and a complete rendition of the Clocktower sequence. The "Skateboard Chase" is painfully slow and obviously not the same as the original version. One only needs to listen to the first thirty seconds of "Hoverboard Chase" from Back to the Future II to realize just how flaccid Debney's take is. The slow sections, such as "The Letter" and the second half of "Lone Pine Mall '85" sound close enough to the originals to be acceptable. However, I cringe every time I listen to Debney's take on "Clocktower Pt. 1." This track on the album is embarrassingly awful, especially when the readily available OST version is so obviously superior. The tempo, as usual, is agonizingly slow. Crucial percussion parts were inexplicably dropped, including an absolutely vital snare drum ostinato near the end, when Marty yells to Doc, "I have to tell you about the future!" There is no sense of the urgency, frenetic energy, and heroism of the moment. The snare drums that do remain intact in the piece are much too soft. In general, certain parts of the orchestra come off consistently muted, namely the snare drums and the piano. The piano in "Lone Pine Mall '85" is barely audible, which does much to detract from the impact of the cue. The only cue that makes this album worth buying is "Clocktower Pt. 2." Although noticeably slower in tempo, the recording of this cue is very entertaining. Unfortunately, the trombones' phrasing near the end, as in the main theme, just doesn't seem right. This cue does show off some of the technical proficiency of certain sections of the orchestra, particularly the trumpets. The inclusion of "Doc Returns," adequately performed, is also a welcome cue on the album. The selections from Back to the Future II are somewhat better performed than the ones from Part I, and the different ending of "The Letter" is fascinating. And for those of us who already have the soundtrack to Part III, the cues from this film on the album are a complete waste of time. They do prove one thing, though: any version of Back to the Future III that Debney could possibly come up with would no doubt have been woefully inferior. "The Ride" is performed at a faster tempo than the rest of the album, but the piece itself is really just a pastiche of music from the trilogy, with a few bars from Predator thrown in. It really does not add anything to the Back to the Future canon. Finally, there is the issue of music that was left off from the original film. Sure, the music for DeLorean chase in the beginning of the film was not included. And how about the extended version of "Johnny B. Goode?" On the MCA soundtrack, the song fades out before it gets a chance to really cook, because that's when Marty goes crazy on his guitar, ending with that ear-bleeding riff. If they're going to waste our time polluting our favorite soundtracks with oldies, why stop halfway? The full version of "Johnny B. Goode" is hilarious and would have brought down the house if it had been included as a bonus track. In the future, I recommend all forty-five or so minutes of the score be released. Include all the songs too, except for that godawful "Time Bomb Town." And give us an extended "Johnny B. Goode." I must confess, though, that I do listen to this CD fairly often. If you just skip "Clocktower Pt. 1," then the album is listenable and entertaining. I know how awful and inferior this performance is, but I love Back to the Future, and I just can't help myself. It's a guilty pleasure. The sound quality has none of the freshness and vibrancy of the original. What happened? Varese used to give us excellent recordings like Hollywood '95, Vertigo, and Frontiers. Now we get subpar recordings like this that sound like they were all done in one take. Take away one star if you're not a Back to the Future fan. ***
The insert notes include lengthy commentary about the music as heard in the films, but fail to provide much insight into the process behind these recordings. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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