Buy it... if you'd enjoy hearing a strong compilation of re-recorded themes from The Godfather saga, performed with the appropriate melodramatic weight and a satisfying, Sicilian touch.

Avoid it... if nothing but the original recordings of the masterpieces will suffice.

The Godfather Trilogy: (Compilation) As much as John Williams fans would argue with the claim, no trilogy of film music has had a more significant influence on worldwide audiences than the scores by Nino Rota and Carmine Coppola for the three parts of The Godfather saga (and Rota's music in particular). Rota only lived less than ten years beyond his involvement with the first two films for The Godfather franchise, and he recalled in those late years how astonished he was to hear the love theme from the original film performed on so many street corners as he would travel about his city. Indeed, the themes from Rota's two scores are infamous in such a way that the music has touched a grand array of people beyond the usual realm of film music enthusiasts. It also helps that the first two films are considered among the best of all time, with devoted fans ranging from the saga's own actors to the deposed Saddam Hussein of Iraq. In many ways, the quality of the music for the films is difficult to qualify from an American perspective. Both of Rota's efforts were nominated for Academy Awards, with a rare sequel win for the second score. The producers of the film, at the time of assigning the first score, wanted to avoid both an Americanized sound as well as one that simply conveyed Italian cliches, and they thus hired the classical European composer to provide the convincing Sicilian accent for the series. Director Francis Ford Coppola also hired his own father (who had scored several decent, though not overwhelming films in his lengthy writing career) for additional dance numbers to exist as source music for the film. While Carmine Coppola's material compliments several key scenes in the first two entries, it is Rota's melodramatically thematic music that stands out as the obvious favorite. Coppola's score for the third installment integrated themes from the first two scores and extends the same source sound that identified his contributed music for the first two scores. The choice of Rota for the start of the saga was successful because his work brilliantly played to both the authentic and stereotypical expectations for the series, breathing sonic life into the myth of Sicilian power.

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The romantic elements inherent in the scores add to the appeal of an otherwise dreary and horrific storyline. The title theme for the series was adapted from one of Rota's early comedy scores, though the first two films in this franchise are best known by their respective secondary themes. The love theme from the first one is the piece that Rota always heard on street corners, saturated with bittersweet tones in its tragic progressions. The immigrant theme in the second score carries the most emotional weight of any in The Godfather series, and, with its merging of that heavy atmosphere and a sense of optimism, remains a highlight of Rota's career. In 2001, the City of Prague Philharmonic, under a long-standing contract with the Silva Screen Records label in England, recorded a variety of film scores (with John Barry classics among their most usual selections) that included a collection of about 50 minutes of music from The Godfather saga as one of those endeavors. With selections from all three films, the City of Prague Philharmonic captured the spirit of the Sicilian crime family with interestingly precise performances. While the music isn't that complicated to interpret, the emotional style in which it was originally performed was key to its appeal. The Prague performers excelled in their task of revisiting the original scores' distinct Sicilian style, and the broad character of the three primary themes is well handled. The highlight of the album is the four-minute finale cue for the first film, during which the Crouch End Festival Chorus offers magical accompaniment to the otherwise instrumentally consistent presentation. The selections from the third film reflect the weaknesses of Coppola's score, and, in the end, it is Pietro Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" prelude piece (which accompanies the coordinated hits at the end of the film) that carries the most attention from the score. A more diverse selection of cues from the second score may have also assisted this album in achieving greater appeal, though with the ensemble only lightly incorporating the composition's specialty elements (such as the mandolin), this inclusion may not have been possible. As is, however, the album remains a strong set of performances of the very best music from a trio of cinematic icons. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download