Filmtracks: Hollywood Stars: Music from the Films of Sean Connery (Compilation)

Hollywood Stars: Music from the Films of Sean Connery: (Compilation) By the late 1990's, Silva Screen had hit their stride in their production of large-scale symphonic re-recordings of film music featuring The City of Prague Philharmonic. As they had done before and would do again in the future, they released several actor-specific compilations in the summer of 1998. Under the common title of "Hollywood Stars," the three concurrent releases of the series were devoted to films starring Sean Connery, Kevin Costner, and Mel Gibson. Compilations related to Connery in particular were common in the 1990's, as the actor continued his success in the action genre and a new generation of popular composers provided their services for his films. Silva had released a "Music from the Films of Sean Connery" album in 1993 with some of the same selections (identical performances) as the expanded 1998 "Hollywood Stars" album. Interestingly, the other two "Hollywood Stars" albums released concurrently were both HDCDs, whereas the Connery one was not. The likely reason for this difference was the re-use of the old recordings that had not taken advantage of the current recording technologies. The only significant difference in the sound of the 1993 and 1998 albums is the change in the synth programmers used for the albums. By the 1998 albums, Silva Screen had acquired the services of Mark Ayres to provide the necessary synthetic music, so tracks like The Name of the Rose will sound different in the newer generation of Silva albums. The quality of performances by The City of Prague Philharmonic had also improved in general over the five years, though they were still capable of recording some painful interpretations at times. Two of the more ambitious cues to be added to the 1998 album included The Great Train Robbery and The Man Who Would Be King, both of which received strong and enthusiastic performances by the ensemble. The most recent score represented at the time had been The Rock, which is a bizarre recording; anytime you have John Barry-enthusiast Nic Raine arranging a Media Ventures score, you're likely to get a strange result. Ayres' synthetic blend with the orchestra is competent, but the overall mix is inaccurately light on bass elements.

One significant failure that would continue to plague Silva albums in the future is the lifeless, jazz-less recording of The Russia House. Why ensembles refuse to employ a saxophone for its recording is baffling, for the use of a synthesizer or clarinet as a replacement simply doesn't work. The Ayres performance of The Name of the Rose is not as vibrant as the previous version pressed by Silva. The following hymn from The Hunt for Red October is a highlight of the album, though the translation of lyrics into English (despite the Russian-inspired, heavy male voices of the Crouch End Festival Chorus) could take some adjustment for fans of the score. Silva debuted its recording of "The Trees" from Medicine Man here, abandoning the enjoyable medley of music from the film on the previous album. Its Barry-like tones are well handled. The selections from First Knight are different from those presented on the first "Cinema Choral Classics" CD and provide an robust rendition of the love theme from the final cue of the film. The album then provides three strangely contrasting tracks, with Ennio Morricone's The Untouchables (once again different from a previous recording), Bernard Herrmann's Marnie, and Barry's Robin & Marian not meshing well with each other, however the performance of Marnie is very crisp. Many of the James Bond selections carry over from previous Silva albums and are somewhat generic performances (Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops always did better with them), though the trite secondary theme "007" that Barry uses for action sequences in most of his early Bond scores is presented. Once again, the Never Say Never Again selection is an original performance since Silva owns the rights to the score. Michel Legrand's score is insufferable no matter which cue is included, however. An extended performance of the James Bond theme on this album is one that would be available, along with many of these themes, on Silva's forthcoming "Bond and Beyond" albums. Overall, this is the best of the three "Hollywood Stars" series released in 1998, mostly because of some decent key performances and the inclusion of cues from scores that aren't readily available in their original form. ****