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| • | Newest Major Reviews: | . | • | This Week's Most Popular Reviews: | • | Best-Selling Albums: | ||
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1. WALL·E 2. Kung Fu Panda 3. The Happening 4. Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 5. Iron Man | . | . |
1. Moulin Rouge 2. Gladiator 3. POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl 4. Star Wars: A New Hope 5. Edward Scissorhands |
6. Pearl Harbor 7. Schindler's List 8. Titanic 9. Braveheart 10. Home Alone | . | . |
1. Varèse Sarabande 25th 2. The Last of the Mohicans 3. Legends of the Fall 4. Schindler's List 5. LOTR: Return of the King (Set) |
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you want to hear Prague's fantastic new performances of the Klingon attack music from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and a nicely arranged suite from Star Trek: Nemesis. Avoid it... if you already own all of the other performances on the "Space and Beyond" albums and the price of this new set isn't worth 11 new minutes of music. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The Star Trek Album: (The City of Prague Philharmonic) It has been several years since the Silva family of labels released their last major, critically acclaimed sci-fi collection of film music. After the success of their "Space and Beyond" album in 1997, they produced two sequel albums in the series (in 1998 and 2000). Over the course of those three albums, the City of Prague Philharmonic performed nearly every major piece of Star Trek music available at the time, and while most of it appeared on the first album in that series, there were additional piece sprinkled throughout the two follow-up albums. All of these double-CD sets offered interesting performances of the selections, and while some of them were better performed than others, the overwhelming magnitude of available re-recordings from Prague remains staggering. Other labels that have recorded Star Trek music on their various compilations, including the Telarc releases of Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops and Varèse Sarabande releases of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, have condensed their Star Trek recordings onto single 'final frontier' album offerings. It was only a matter of time before Silva did the same with their own recordings from the franchise, but unlike the other two labels, Silva had released so many recordings of Star Trek music that two-CDs are now required to feature all of it. Their 2003 "Star Trek Album" contains all of Prague's previous recordings, most of their sound effects, and adds a couple of new cues to round out the selection from all ten feature films. The inherent problem with this kind of release, of course, is the same problem that exists when Varèse Sarabande or any other label shuffles around their re-recorded selections and releases them again; people who already own the previous releases of these recordings are left wondering if the price of the new set is worth having the minimal extra, new material. In the case of this "Star Trek Album," Prague offers two new performances. On the "Space and Beyond" albums, Prague had offered identical performances of all of the other tracks, although it should be noted that there are some gems in that collection. The Prague recordings of the opening titles from Goldsmith's Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the overture from Horner's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the end titles from Goldsmith's Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and end titles from Eidelman's Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (which, unlike other groups' arranged suites, does include the rolling Klingon motif) are all superior and highly enjoyable, and most off the other selections are without major mistakes. If a criticism is to be had with the addition of performances of the more recent Goldsmith scores in the film franchise, it revolves around the fact that all of the suites from the last three films, as well as the fifth, feature the same suite structure for their end credits; thus, you end up hearing the Goldsmith's original film theme over and over and over again. For this new album set, Nic Raine (who regularly does a spectacular job arranging and conducting John Barry material) personally arranged his own suite of themes and noteworthy cues from Star Trek: Nemesis. Not only does this solve the problem of repeat performances of Goldsmith's original end credit suite format, but Raine's arrangement presents the best thematic and action music heard in Star Trek: Nemesis. From hearing the eight-minute suite of this score (including the opening title, Shinzon's theme, the duel between ships at the end, and a sensitive burst of the emotional sub-theme for the crew's break-up), you'd think that the original score is a masterpiece in the series, and despite the shortcomings of Goldsmith's original recording, the Prague performers whip surprising life into it here. Likewise, the other new recording is also lively. The percussion section brought their silverware to bang on pots and pans (Horner's theme sounds like a Klingon religious feast day, doesn't it?) for the Klingon attack sequence in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, a score that had previously been omitted from Prague's Star Trek selections. The addition of these two cues completes the Silva and Prague presentation of Star Trek music, and makes for one fine set (unless you're disgruntled about the situation because you already own most of these performances). The sound effects are negligible, never as interesting or true to the shows as Kunzel's similar attempts. The greatest fault of the album is that the cues are not in chronological order (of the films and shows) for some reason. Otherwise, it's a noteworthy set with two fantastic new performances thrown into the mix. ****
* Previously available performance on "Space and Beyond" ** Previously available performance on "Alien Invasion: Space and Beyond II" *** Previously available performance on "Space 3: Beyond the Final Frontier" # Previously unavailable performance
The insert includes notes about the scores and films/shows, but no extra deatils about the recordings. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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