Buy it... if you are a true Goldsmith enthusiast and wish to hear a recording of one of his better compilation concerts in the later 1980's.

Avoid it... only if the search for the rare album doesn't merit the time and expense, or if, for some strange reason, you once attended a Goldsmith concert and were disappointed.

Goldsmith

Jerry Goldsmith: Suites and Themes: (Compilation) It is rare that a one-time concert performance of a single composer's works is recorded and pressed to CD, especially considering advancements in recording technologies. In the 1980's, the Masters Film Music Special Release Series --CDs produced by Varèse Sarabande executive Robert Townson-- released several Jerry Goldsmith scores in either commercial or limited fashion. Some of these were direct Varèse Sarabande albums, such as the two Lionheart volumes and The Final Conflict, although The Boys from Brazil and Jerry Goldsmith: Suites and Themes were released under the separate "Masters Film Music" label and were considerably more rare. The 1980's were arguably the greatest era of Goldsmith's career, and to celebrate his achievements, The Philharmonia of London presented concert arrangements of many of Goldsmith's successful scores for public performances. One of these performances was recorded and pressed in March, 1987 (without audience noise) as a limited Masters Film Music album. With its recording and mastering existing in purely digital form, the album offered a vibrant presentation of this 64-minute concert on a product that was limited to 1,500 copies and made available only through the early days of Varèse Sarabande's CD Club. With detailed packaging, original art by Bob Peak, and crisp sound quality rarely heard on CDs at the time, the album immediately became a top collectible. Valued at about $150 after initially selling out, Jerry Goldsmith: Suites and Themes remains to this day one of the most impressive and varied collections of the composer's work. While Goldsmith has conducted his own work for a precious few other albums, this one stays largely away from the composer's pop culture hits and also has the advantage of coming long before subsequent compilations in the 1990's. When the CD was first circulated in 1988, some of the music on the album had not been performed by an orchestra for album before, further heightening demand.

The selection of music in the concert may come as a surprise for some listeners, partly because it avoids some of his best known pieces (ones that would appear regularly in concerts of the 1990's and 2000's) and partly because it also avoids scores that were very popular at the time of the recording. Leaning a bit heavily on music in the 1970's, the concert relies on the muster of Goldsmith's war and adventure works on one hand and provides a healthy dose of his television writing on the other. A suite from The Blue Max is curiously long; despite the quality of that score, its sweep of primary themes and motifs occupies a quarter of the running time of this entire concert. The television suite may sound awkward for some listeners given that these pieces weren't always meant for the robust nature of London's best performers (and thus sometimes has the same troublesome result as a few of Erich Kunzel's recordings). A beautiful selection from the outstanding television score Masada (with a theme that shares many traits with Under Fire) yields to perhaps the concert's standout suite from Gremlins. Since Gremlins was originally an electronic score, this spirited orchestral recording not only sticks out like a sore thumb on this album, but provided the only orchestral performance of over 7 minutes of its material available until Gremlins 2 somewhat scratched the itch for more orchestral adaptation from the original a few years later.

The primary "motion picture suite" in the concert begins with somewhat flat, but still enjoyable performances of The Sand Pebbles (lacking in power) and Chinatown (losing its seductiveness) before providing a performance of the woodwind theme from A Patch of Blue. With the original version of this score existing in a much smaller incarnation in its original recording, the fullness of its adaptation here might catch you pleasantly off guard. A somewhat mundane variation of the "Carol Anne's Theme" from Poltergeist loses some of its magic without the choral presence. Following these soft pieces, however, the suite ends with two massive thematic romps. After the seemingly exuberant carnival atmosphere of Papillon comes a percussively pounding presentation of The Wind and the Lion, a score that is sadly underrecognized in Goldsmith's career. The "generals suite" reminds us that Goldsmith certainly got caught up in the parading egos of wartime heroes, with both MacArthur and Patton offering a combination of pomp and confidence that, with the ensemble's equally enthusiastic performances, makes it seem as though Goldsmith enjoyed nothing more than scoring the concept of "Americans kicking Godless foreign ass." The concert ends with a repetitive performance of the title theme from Lionheart, which was both brand new at the time of the recording (a treat for concert-goers) as well as a favorite project of Townson (and thus, probably the reason for its existence here).

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The performances by The Philharmonia of London, while containing a few errors here and there (entirely in the lower-ranges of the brass section, oddly), capture the original spirit of Goldsmith's compositions. While making the best use of the percussion section as possible, the performances do avoid all use of synthesized elements. As with any selection of music in a concert, the omission of some of a composer's works from the program is often curious. In this case, the lack of strong representation from Goldsmith's work of the 1980's is perhaps this album's only weakness. Without the inclusion of Star Trek, either of the two Rambo scores, Under Fire, or Hoosiers, the album sells the more recent music of the composer short. The selections up until that point were very consistent with Goldsmith's Academy Award nominations, making their absence all the more disappointing. And while many of those scores relied heavily on synthetic elements, the adaptation of Gremlins proved that Goldsmith wasn't afraid to translate his synth/orchestra combo scores with traditional orchestration for live performance. Still, despite these final complaints, the Jerry Goldsmith: Suites and Themes album holds a special place in many collectors hearts. Whether its history as a rare, collectible compilation or its fine presentation of many of Goldsmith's best pre-1988 works is the reason for its long lasting appeal, the album is worth your time and effort in searching for it on the secondary market. It is a shame that more of Goldsmith's own conducted live concerts from later years weren't recorded and pressed onto CD with similar treatment. *****

Bias Check:

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