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Review of The Back to the Future Trilogy (Alan Silvestri)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you only have casual interest in Alan Silvestri's
fantastic music for the trilogy and seek robust re-recordings of
highlights from the first two entries.
Avoid it... if you're enough of a fan of the scores that John Debney's significantly slower tempos in conducting them will overshadow the benefit of the monumentally fuller sound of the recording.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Back to the Future Trilogy: (Alan Silvestri)
With dazzling and memorable themes, Alan Silvestri's music for the three
Back to the Future films was just as important to the 1980's as
the scores for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones sagas. The
film was a monumental success for everyone involved, solidifying both
Robert Zemeckis and Silvestri in their respective fields and earning
massive financial rewards for the studio. Both Zemeckis and Silvestri
were relative unknowns, despite their collaboration on the popular
Romancing the Stone just prior. Zemeckis trusted Silvestri with
the large-scale orchestral score to Back to the Future despite
Silvestri's lack of experience with that level of writing. His work for
the trilogy is nothing less than spectacular, however, when you study
just how well his optimistically heroic themes can be manipulated for so
many different situations throughout the saga. The original film alone
stands as one of the best examples of how to merge orchestral action
music with source songs, leading at the time to a commercial album that
served mostly the purpose of promoting the role of the latter element.
No official score release containing the scant 45 minutes of music from
Back to the Future was forthcoming in the twenty years to follow,
likely due to licensing nightmares and associated costs. Its existence
on CD has always remained in the venue of pricey bootlegs with
questionable sound quality. The two sequel scores were both released
adequately by the Varèse Sarabande label, though the middle score
in particular is often considered more of a rehash of copied and pasted
ideas than the Western-oriented third entry. To help rectify the
unsatisfying situation regarding the music from Back to the
Future on album, Varèse decided to commission John Debney and
the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to perform music from the first
two films, as well as the four-minute Universal City ride that utilizes
an original Silvestri composition based on the trilogy. They would then
throw on some original cues from the third film to round out the
album.
The compilation serves as a sort of bus tour of Silvestri's contributions to the series, and its pacing can sometimes leave you wanting more. The CD features over twenty minutes from the original film, under fifteen minutes from both the sequels, and the four-minute ride score. More important to remember, though, is that beyond the newfound availability of the original score on CD, with several previously unreleased cues, you have the perk of hearing this extremely dynamic music performed by a larger ensemble and recorded in brilliant digital sound. If any trilogy of music has begged through the years for this kind of treatment, it's this one. Debney and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra had collaborated with Varèse to produce several recordings of note in 1998 and 1999, including those for Superman and Amazing Stories, both receiving wide-spread critical praise. Promised to film music enthusiasts more than a year before its release, the Back to the Future re-recordings languished in an agonizing production flux, and with the delay and several other factors, the album unfortunately never lived up to the hype. Whether criticism aimed at this compilation is warranted or not depends largely on your ability to forgive Debney for his somewhat inaccurate interpretations of the original material in order to hear it performed in such great quality and size. For casual listeners, it's simply great to hear the original Back to the Future score performed in such a lively soundscape. The weakness of that score has always been its somewhat undersized stature, though everyone would probably agree that Silvestri made up for the diminished grandeur with the pure energy and enthusiasm of his composition. If you haven't heard any of the original recordings in quite some time, then you won't notice the differences, and the performance itself is absent of errors until you reach the final cue for the ride. For the extreme enthusiasts of these scores, though, the performances of the RSNO will be marginally adequate, if not slow and lacking sufficient energy in a few parts, due to the plenty of interpretive liberties taken by Debney. It's a case where tempo can make all the difference, and Debney seems to have taken the stance that the score can withstand some slower pacing due to its heftier size here. Some of that is a perception issue as well; since the size of the ensemble is accompanied by a significant level of reverberation, the highly precise staccato movements of Silvestri's composition can seemed washed out. The resulting bold edge to the performance causes some of the frenetic energy from the originals to be lost, and only in the suite from the ride's re-arrangement score do the quick tempos of the original film scores surface. Most fans will point to the "Clock Tower" cues as suffering the most from this slower pacing. While Debney seems to handle the primary, heroic, fanfare part of the title theme relatively well, the suspenseful interlude, which could very well be more famous due to its instantly recognizable opening three notes, is often left dragging its feet amongst the trombones. The selections from Back to the Future, Part II are much of the same, as the original is largely simply an extension of the first score. An alternate take in "The Letter" is a pleasant surprise and the previously unreleased music for "The West," Silvestri's trailer of sorts for the third film (tacked onto the end of the second one) is performed with outstanding resonance. Given how well Debney seemingly handled the teaser for Back to the Future, Part III makes Varèse's decision to include only a handful of original cues from that film a bit of a disappointment. Owners of the third score on CD will find this section useless. Debney's take on the "Point of No Return" cue alone could have redeemed this album for skeptics. The music from the ride is a decent sampling of the themes from all three films, and it borrows some enjoyable ideas from Silvestri's Predator score in the latter half, though it ends on a very sudden and unsatisfying note. Overall, this compilation may not really satisfy the musical needs of the trilogy's fans. It's fantastic for casual film score listeners, though without the crucial songs from the first film and with tempo issues in the re-recordings, it fails to serve as the ultimate in Back to the Future albums. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 53:09
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert notes include lengthy commentary about the music as heard in the films,
but fail to provide much insight into the process behind these recordings.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from The Back to the Future Trilogy are Copyright © 1999, Varèse Sarabande and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 9/24/99 and last updated 10/16/07. |
