: (Georges Delerue)
Despite its production difficulties, the 1979 adaptation of Walter
Farley's famed children's novel concept had become a blockbuster hit
with some help from producer Francis Ford Coppola. A sequel to
was already in the rough planning stages at the time
of the first film's shooting, and once again featuring the support of
Coppola and plenty of beautiful cinematography, the boy and his Arabian
stallion raced into theatres in 1983. While it may not have generated
the same fiscal success as the original entry,
revealed itself to be a decent film, an elongated chase
between the boy and the previous owners of the horse across the deserts
of North Africa that culminates in the prerequisite race scene. Plaguing
the first film was an extremely unsettled situation regarding the
composition and subsequent dismemberment and partial replacement of
Carmine Coppola's score, resulting in an ambiguous musical personality
absent any genuine warmth or excitement. No such problems existed for
, however, for new director Robert
Dalva immediately turned to the esteemed Academy Award winner Georges
Delerue to capture the story's sweeping scope and enduring friendship.
In so doing, the production avoided any trouble with the score
whatsoever; Delerue's music was applauded immediately and mostly
unmolested in its application to the film. The composer's work, put into
better perspective now by a career cut sadly short, was always precise
in its ability to convey the emotional heart of a film. Because the
story of the sequel changed the genre slightly (pushing the fantasy from
the high seas and racetrack to the Arabian deserts), the music was
required to match its move into the more straight forward adventure
genre. Delerue, as per usual, was up to the task, writing a sweeping and
overwhelmingly romantic theme for the boy/horse relationship and a
handful of impressive secondary ideas for the adventurous desert
settings. The disparity between the sense of style in the two scores
could not be more obvious. Every moment in Delerue's score is
emotionally involving and lovingly performed, consistent in its
instrumentation from start to finish. He takes the emphasis on flute,
harp, and clarinet from the original film and unleashes those elements
into his beautiful melodies, mixed brilliantly as always.
Delerue's title theme for
The Black Stallion
Returns is among the composer's best, which is high praise for a man
who made a living out of writing attractively elegant themes. This one
is particularly long and fluid, surprisingly malleable in its
translation from its major key fanfare mode into the minor for solo
woodwind expressions of despair. His display of mastery in the title
theme is twofold; first, the opening prologue and title cue offers a
superb lesson in tempo. After the flute performs the theme in almost
double time, the full London Session Orchestra kicks in with a
performance of the same theme at a grand and considerably slower pace,
the transition flowing seamlessly. The other mastery of Delerue's
primary string theme is the aforementioned, occasional insertion of
minor key interludes into its progressions. He had a knack for writing
incredibly enticing and sorrowful themes by doing just this throughout
his career, though there is nothing downbeat about
The Black Stallion
Returns. A secondary theme for the tribal allies in Africa occupies
many of the bass woodwind solos throughout the score, erupting into a
full action motif of great diversity in the race sequences late in the
film. Other motifs exist for the main villain (a brutish, simple
progression on snarling brass) and the boy's journey (heard in a full,
concert-like arrangement complete with victorious interlude in the
clipper travel scene). The latter theme, only conveyed twice in the
film, is remarkably similar in style to Basil Poledouris' epic drama
themes of the era. In its whole, Delerue's score certainly has its slow
moments, but its momentous and gorgeous themes, led by the overwhelming
title identity, alone carry the weight of the entire recording. Although
The Black Stallion is remembered by far as a superior children's
film,
The Black Stallion Returns is a score that makes the
original sound like child's play. Due to the restraints placed on the
team of composers and musicians of the original project by their
director, this is not as much a comment about their abilities. Instead,
their last minute efforts simply cannot compare to Delerue's talent for
these kinds of beautiful productions. The Delerue score was highly
requested on CD by countless film music collectors for decades. It had
existed on a rearranged LP album at the time of its debut, though it
especially had been desired in the digital medium since the
mid-80's.
Disappointingly,
The Black Stallion Returns
never showed up on Delerue's best known compilations of re-recordings
either (a curiosity, given the great affection for the score from the
composer and crew members on its recording), making it an even greater
request from his fans. A Prometheus CD release of 2001 (a
non-club/non-limited entry), in special coordination with MGM, provided
both scores in the franchise with satisfying attention to detail. The
music, identical to what had appeared on the LP, was remastered for that
CD release, though Delerue's original recordings always sound fantastic.
In 2009, Intrada Records expanded the offerings for the Coppola and
Delerue scores, each limited to a scant 1,500 copies and immediately in
high demand. While there wasn't as much from the sequel score to add (in
comparison to the monumental expansion of the first score and all of its
alternate recordings), there are a few highlights in the film version of
The Black Stallion Returns to take note of, namely a few strong
variations on the title theme (including one short choral accompaniment
removed from both the film and original album). Interestingly, because
the masters were handled differently between Prometheus and Intrada, the
recording does sound quite a bit different. The 2001 album emphasized
certain parts of the ensemble over others, reducing the influence of
some of the composer's background flourishes. But that 2001 product
aided the scope of the music by presenting it with more thunderous
reverb. Intrada's album gives it a more intimate sound, allowing for
greater appreciation of the technicalities but losing a bit of the
grandness of the score's scale. Anyone dissatisfied with the complete
score's dry presentation will be happy to find that Intrada included the
former album mix on the same CD, and die-hards could probably achieve
the best of both worlds by simply adding a bit of their own reverb into
the complete score's mix. For listeners unable to affordably obtain
either of the scores in the franchise, the 2001 album remains a strong
compilation. On that product, it's difficult not to dismiss the original
The Black Stallion score after one casual listen, skipping almost
immediately to the second half as many others will do. Delerue's
relatively short score (and one could say either version of the final
8-minute track alone) is easily worth the price of the album. If
Filmtracks were to ever somehow develop into its own small island
nation, then Delerue's theme from
The Black Stallion Returns
would be an irresistibly tempting national anthem.
***** @Amazon.com: CD or
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