By the mid-1970s, Miklos Rózsa had slipped into a kind of semi-retirement from film scoring. He still did concert works as part of his "double life" but movie assignments tended to be for entries that required a kind of retro/throwback sound, stuff like Fedora, Last Embrace, his exceptional score for Time After Time, and in this case the romantic thriller music for 1981's Eye of the Needle.

This score for a long time has been represented by its capable LP recording the composer did with the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, a group he worked with on several other album recordings in his later career. But the new Deluxe Edition released this year finally includes the film recording by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, a group the Hungarian maestro had an even more impressive relationship with (e.g., a Quo Vadis highlights recording, the trilogy of Polydor LPs). And the film recording is truly superior - there's more bite, more oomph to the performance which helps to elevate the work a bit (worth an extra half star in my book).

****1/2

If all Rózsa sounds the same to you, this probably won't change your mind about him. But any fan of the composer really owes it to themself to seek this release (currently CD only) out. It getting released on the same day as the Deluxe Edition of For Love of the Game was fitting - two legendary composers and the last great scores of their respective careers.

Also, the liner notes also reveal that one of the composer's three main themes was completely excised from the film!