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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
For the original The Black Stallion score, Coppola's material still maintains a majority of screen time, and it is simple but adequate thematic material that struggles to hold the score together. While the ambience he set for the film was carried on by the other musicians who rewrote additional music, the thematic integrity and instrumentation lost its consistency. While all of the music for the film together sounds reasonably similar, the style that director Ballard wanted to have artificially inserted into some of the running and vista sequences doesn't mesh with Coppola's underscore. The rousing fanfare in the fifth track of the album, composed by Walker and Nyle Steiner, is an attempt to infuse the picture with a large fanfare of brass that cannot possibly work with the preceeding score for the island scenes. The minimalistic scoring of those scenes with solo harp and flute completely loses the fantasy element that Coppola's score had attempted to campture in its entirety. On the album, the correct sequencing will give you a very good idea of just how butchered the scoring project was in its final weeks. The final two score tracks provide a glimpse --along with the simply repeated theme suite as the finale of the score-- of how rich Coppola's score could have been if Ballard hadn't sent the musicians back to record over and over again. Georges Delerue had no such problems, of course, for the sequel, The Black Stallion Returns. His work, put into perspective now by a career cut sadly short, is always precise in its ability to capture the heart of a film. The story of the sequel changed the genre slighty; instead of concentrating on the fantasy of the high seas and race track (as the original film had done), the sequel takes an awkward move to the Arabian deserts, and in so doing pushed the film into more of a straight adventure genre. Deleure, as per usual, was up to the task, writing a sweeping romantic theme for the boy/horse relationship and some impressive sub-themes for the adventurous desert settings. The title theme is among Delerue's best, which is high praise for a man who made a living out of composing elegant romance themes. He takes the flute, harp, and clarinet instrumentation from the original film and unleashes them into his beautiful themes. His mastery of the title theme is two fold; first, the first track offers a superb lesson in thematic tempo. After the flute performs the theme in almost double time, the full London Session Orchestra kicks in with a performance of the same theme at a grand and considerably slower pace... with the two piece flowing seemlessly together. The other mastery of Delerue's string theme is his occasional insertion of minor key interludes into the central mass of his themes. He had a knack for writing incredibly enticing and sorrowful themes by doing just this thoughout his career, though there is nothing downbeat about The Black Stallion Returns. The secondary action theme is likewise a brassy affair that provides more diversity in the race sequences in the middle of the film. Overall, while The Black Stallion is remembered by far as a superior children's film, The Black Stallion Returns is a score that makes the original sound like child's play. Due to the restraints placed on the team of composers and musicians of the original project by their director, this is not as much a comment about their abilities. Instead, their last minute efforts simply cannot compare to Delerue's talent for massive projects. The Delerue score was highly requested on CD by countless film music collectors. Both scores had existed with the same contents on LP albums at the time of their openings, though the Delerue score especially had been missing on album since that time. The Black Stallion Returns never showed up on Delerue's best known compilations or re-recordings either, making it an even greater request for his fans. The Prometheus release (a non-club entry), in coordination with MGM, provides both scores with attention to detail. The music was remastered for the CD release, though Delerue's original recordings always sound fantastic, so it's difficult to hear if there is a significant increase in harmonic range. The Coppola/Walker score is distant in parts, but is otherwise good for a 1979 recording. The Delerue half is momentous in sound quality as always. As a Delerue fan myself, I dismissed the original The Black Stallion score after one casual listen, and, as I suppose many others will do, listened repeatedly to the second half. The half hour of Delerue music on this album (and some would say the final 8-minute track alone) is worth the price of the album. Pick it up from a soundtrack specialty outlet while it lasts; Prometheus CDs have been known to go out of print once sold out, and I wouldn't be surprised if that happened with this one as well.
The Black Stallion Returns: ***** Album Overall: ****
The insert includes commentary by Randall Larson and Robert Dalva about the films and their scores. Full Credits:
Performed by The Zoetrope Film Symphony Orchestra Tracks 1, 3, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15 and 16 Composed by Carmine Coppola Track 9 Composed by Carmine Coppola and Shirley Walker Tracks 4, 5, and 10 Composed by Shirley Walker and Nyle Steiner Track 2 Composed by Shirley Walker, Nyle Steiner, Bill Douglass and Carmine Coppola Track 6 Composed by Carmine Coppola, Kenneth Nash, George Marsh Track 13 Composed by Dick Rosmini • The Black Stallion Returns Performed by The London Session Orchestra All Music Composed and Conducted by Georges Delerue | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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