Buy it... if you've been pondering the purchase one of Varèse's re-recordings but are still unsure about where to start, because this set is a really good starter kit at a reasonable price.

Avoid it... if you are deterred by the heavily weighted attention towards Golden and Silver Age material on this compilation.

Goldsmith
Debney
McNeely

In Session: A Film Music Celebration: (Compilation) Throughout the late 1990's, the Varèse Sarabande label sponsored the recordings and album releases of an extensive amount of famous film music, almost all of which aimed at the Golden and Silver Ages of Hollywood. The 2001 double-CD set "In Session: A Film Music Celebration" is the ultimate souvenir from Varèse's lengthy collection of re-recordings of classic scores over that span, and the album served as the exclamation point on such endeavors that unfortunately waned in subsequent years. Primarily with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Glasgow, Varèse's executive producer Robert Townson contracted for a seemingly endless stream of re-recordings of complete scores from classic films and composers, some of which not appealing to enough listeners to earn decent returns in record form. Still, the majority of these efforts yielded newly discovered life in especially scores of the 1960's, with music from the 1940's through the 1990's represented in total. While many of the original versions of these scores exist on other labels, these re-recordings offer interpretations, often extremely close to the originals, by top contemporary composers who regularly conducted the performing groups at the time. Composers such as Jerry Goldsmith, John Debney, and Joel McNeely took time off from their composing duties for new films to re-record these scores for Varèse Sarabande in the U.K. and America, and in the case of Goldsmith, this often meant a superior re-recording of the composer's own works. In some cases, with McNeely, Cliff Eidelman, and Frederic Talgorn conducting, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Seattle Symphony Orchestra had re-recorded the top yearly themes of the 1990's, too, although none of these more modern efforts appears on this set.

Instead, this "In Session" product is primary aimed at the older ears in the film music community. The best selling point of these re-recordings is the opportunity to hear classic themes performed by large, digitally recorded and mixed orchestras in a sound quality that was never realized with the originals. This is especially true of the scores on the first CD of this set. The presentation of music on the "In Session" set is basically chronological, though the beginning and end have been specially ordered. The set begins with Alex North's 2001, which is not the only rejected selection on the album. The second disc finishes the progression, essentially, with Georges Delerue's Platoon. The very end of the second CD is the album's only annoying weakness. For some reason, Joel McNeely's original theme for the "Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire" video game was included, even though it is a comparatively difficult listening experience and certainly no classic when compared to everything else on the set. Also of curiosity is the choice of ending the set with Waxman's Taras Bulba, which can easily leave you with heartburn depending on your opinion of that score. As for the choice of tracks within the centerpiece of the set, producer Townson has done a pretty good job of choosing the best selections of music from each score, perhaps with the exception of Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo (though the later love theme is, perhaps, a bit over-emphasized on compilations of the era). With most selections ranging between three and five minutes in length, the album flows well from piece to piece. The only distractingly lengthy cues come from Goldsmith's Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Platoon. Otherwise, the selections are strong.

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The only other flaw of the album is perhaps a result of a larger circumstance of the Varèse Sarabande re-recordings in general. If you are knowledgeable about the series, you'll know that Townson prefers to tackle scores of the 1960's beyond all others. And in addition to this concentration, there is also a heavy bias towards the works of Alex North and especially Herrmann, both of whom occupy a disproportionate amount of time on this album set. Therefore, the product functions as a good overview of Varèse's classic film music re-recordings, but not as good of a representation of the history of film music as a whole. Varèse's actual intent with the presentation was never known, but if Townson wanted to celebrate the whole of film music history, more attention needed to have been paid to the classic Golden Age works of Miklós Rózsa, Alfred Newman, Erich Korngold, etc, as well as additional Bronze and Digital Age composers (which may have helped album sales, too). That may stand as a suggestion for the series of re-recordings as a whole, for "In Session" exposed just how generous Varèse had been to Herrmann and North. In subsequent years, Townson couldn't resist pushing the size of similar sets to six CDs, and perhaps such a quantity of air time would be necessary to really provide a balanced presentation of the art's history. In great favor for this album is its spectacular packaging, with impressive art and photography by Matthew Joseph Peak and lengthy notes by Townson, who celebrated the production of his 500th album with this entry. Overall, if you've been pondering the purchase one of Varèse's re-recordings but are still unsure about where to start, then this set is a really good starter kit at a reasonable price. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download