Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you're tired of hearing John Barry collections with the same tired themes and seek a truly intellectual collection of the composer's more obscure works performed very accurately in vibrant stereo. Avoid it... if those tired themes are the only reason you enjoy Barry's work, for his older and relatively unknown efforts like the ones on this set fail to muster the same dramatic interest. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
John Barry: Zulu: (Compilation) The Silva Screen label and its lead producer, James Fitzpatrick, have always had a love affair with the music of John Barry, for their compilations haven't provided more performances of a single composer's work than Barry's. After releasing a few much shorter and less energized Barry compilations early in the 1990s, Silva Screen eventually offered a 2-CD set with over one hundred new minutes of Barry music in the same fashion with which they had treated the music of James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, and Bernard Herrmann over the previous year. The difference, however, is that the Barry set does not fall under the same "Essential Music of" descriptor by the label because the initial purpose of this Barry set was to provide a decent stereo release of the music from the composer's 1964 score to Zulu. This 2-CD set offers the complete score to Zulu as its centerpiece, with cues from films, musicals, and television commercials rounding out the compilation. The City of Prague Philharmonic and Crouch End Festival Chorus provide an improved performance of a wide variety of themes over their previous Barry performances, some of which were so poor in the early 1990's as to be unlistenable. For film score collectors, the inclusion of the complete score from Zulu is the main attraction. With the original master sources only existing in mono sound or badly edited attempts to transfer that mono to stereo, Fitzpatrick called upon veteran Barry orchestrator Nic Raine to help reconstruct the entire score in much the same way Raine would later resurrect some of Barry's other famous scores. As usual, Raine's work is outstandingly true to the original Barry sound. Every piece of music in the score was reconstructed and performed with exactly the same number of musicians as the original, which amounted to about 70 players overall. While this ensemble is well suited to match the original recording, the raw power of the brass performances in Zulu would still have been interesting to hear with the full City of Prague Philharmonic, perhaps as a concert version. The choral cues of "Men of Harlech" are of immense size by comparison. Barry's title theme for Zulu is a tad on the simplistic and pompous side, but entertaining nevertheless, and its only true weakness is the repetitive use of it throughout the score's 20 minutes. "First Zulu Appearance and Assault" features the bulk of Barry's rhythmically predictable action music and becomes tiresome after three minutes. Not surprisingly, Zulu is not a very complex score, but its title theme is strong enough to carry it for listening purposes. Barry, of course, would revisit the title theme in 1995 for Cry, The Beloved Country, for which he would tone the theme down to the haunting performances of solo woodwinds. The remaining tracks on the compilation aren't those that you'd typically expect to hear on a commercial Barry compilation, affirming that true Barry collectors are this set's target. The Sunsilk TV commercial piece is very stylish in the original James Bond sort of way. The suite from The Specialist would have been better off featuring just the final, sultry "Did You Call Me?" theme. The ten minute suite from The Tamarind Seed was the premiere recording for LP or CD from that score. The massively choral and fully symphonic theme from The Last Valley is excellent, and the insert notes feature the accompanying lyrics. Silva would go on to commission the re-recording of this entire score a few years later. The closing themes from Mercury Rising represent some of Barry's most recent compositions, and their jazzy undertones pick up right where The Specialist left off. The popular and quirky sax and organ theme for Midnight Cowboy has plenty of spirit (and it would end up in numerous commercials abroad), but it's perhaps a too spirited compared to its neighboring tracks. With the original release of Frances difficult to find in many places, this set gives an excellent chance to hear the best the score has to offer. Rounding out the CD are all strong selections, with the exception of the unfortunate crawl in pacing caused by Hammett. The final suite from 1965's Mister Moses, which like Zulu was also reconstructed, is better than the version that appears with the film. Overall, this set is definitely for the hardest Barry aficionados; the sound quality is excellent and the ensemble's performances are often superior to the originals. Just don't expect the same old tunes. **** Track Listings:
Total Time: 101:36
All artwork and sound clips from John Barry: Zulu are Copyright © 1999, Silva Screen Records. The reviews and notes contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 9/3/99, updated 10/28/07. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 1999-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
