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•	2000 Varèse Album

•	2000 Varèse Album

By comparison to the sensational worldwide embrace met by the title song, Barry's score for Born Free may seem to be rather mellow and understated. While still retaining a theme of noble stature for the lions and the landscape, Barry chose to avoid the grandiose string style that he would eventually become even more famous for, a move made against the wishes of the director. Barry insisted upon taking a more subdued, playful route, emphasizing the innocence of the story and therefore keeping the ensemble pleasantly bubbling along in tonal variations of the main theme for much of the score's running time. Nothing as complicated or even as interesting as Alex North's style for the continent is to be heard here, the layers in Barry's structures held to a minimum. As usual, the composer's more simplistic habits of composition cause the main theme to be inserted in practically even place possible, with only slight variations between performances. Only in a few places does he unleash a burst of tonal romping with all the players to accentuate the massive scale of the environment, as he had done with Zulu. The use of prominent brass to mimic the sounds of the animals in "Elephant Stampede" is of special note, but don't expect much of this excitement to prevail. In general, Barry's score is humbled and conservative, a point of criticism from those expecting to hear his expansive tendencies at work in this context. But it is effective none the less in conveying the bright and optimistic heart of the narrative. Like many films of the era, the soundtrack for Born Free received a separate recording that was made specifically for the LP album release. Barry was never satisfied with the performance of the music in the film (performances that included a considerable number of errors by the players), and the later album version is clearly of superior quality. The follow-up recording was made in vibrant stereo, as many of Barry's scores were, and with some remastering the LP presentation sounds just as dynamic today as a digital era recording. The fate of the original film recording has long remained a mystery (the tapes were declared lost at some point), but the album version's masters survived, and in 2004, Film Score Monthly released 40 minutes of the score from those recovered tapes as part of the label's Silver Age Classics series. Due to the popularity of the score and its accompanying song, this was a rare entry in FSM's series not to be limited in its production run.

Interestingly, Barry recorded nearly an hour of music for the 95-minute film, so there remains material from Born Free that has never made it in original form onto an album. The FSM album does have the Oscar-winning song performed vocally by Matt Monro. This original version, while clearly dated (especially with those dainty flute lines fluttering about in the background), is a satisfying easy listening experience entry in retrospect, one that should please Thunderball enthusiasts. There does remain an alternate source of music for Born Free, however. A re-recorded presentation of the score was released in 2000 and represented a continuation of the collaboration between conductor Frederic Talgorn and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (following the "Hollywood '99" compilation released a few months prior). The performances in this interpretation are steady and enjoyable, though Talgorn was one step behind conductor Nic Raine and the City of Prague Philharmonic is capturing the broad essence of Barry's works. The latter group re-recorded both Zulu and Raise the Titanic at roughly the same time with great success, and there seems to be a touch of epic stature that Talgorn is missing in his interpretation of Barry's style. Part of that difference may owe to the smaller scale of Born Free in general, and the sound quality issue is not quite as relevant here given the superior remastering of Barry's original album recording. The Varèse Sarabande label, under the guidance of executive producer Robert Townson, was pressing re-recordings of other best-selling Barry works frequently at the time, including Body Heat, Out of Africa, and Somewhere in Time. It's easy to understand why Born Free was chosen as the next installment in this series of Barry interpretations, especially given the commercial success of the song and score back in the 1960's. But more technical merit might have resulted had the label and the RSNO tackled a re-recording of another, far more impressive Academy Award winner for Barry in the 1960's, The Lion in Winter (something which the City of Prague Philharmonic did eventually do). While the Varèse album does not feature the song in its pop form, it does have nearly the entire hour-long score represented. Thus, if you're a true Barry collector, then you'd be best served by purchasing both the Varèse and FSM albums for a complete survey of the effortless and innocuous music from the concept.  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For John Barry reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.85 (in 27 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.56 (in 26,889 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.