: (Bernard
Herrmann) As the works of Bernard Herrmann continued to grow in
popularity nearly a quarter of a century after his death, Varèse
Sarabande and 20th Century Fox teamed up for series of three albums in
1999 and 2000 that paid tribute to the composer's various work for the
studio. The first two volumes featured selections from multiple scores
that Herrmann composed for films both early in his employment at Fox (on
this album) and late (on the first volume). All of the releases in the
"Bernard Herrmann at Fox" series provide the original recordings and are
digitally mastered into crisp stereo form. The first volume was released
about six weeks prior to the second one, and featured music from
. The third, released the following year, would
offer extended treatment to
. As for
this second installment, fans are presented with three equally popular
scores from a one-year period in Herrmann's career. Between 1953 and
1954, Fox was in a battle to lure the public away from their television
sets and back into the movie theatres, and they achieved this
(partially) by using the massive CinemaScope widescreen shooting
process. The result was movies with huge and spectacular imagery that
required equally powerful scores. And Herrmann, with the blessing of Fox
music director Alfred Newman, was the resident man for the job. Having
left his more diverse composing career for CBS, Herrmann moved to Los
Angeles and was for a while an exclusive Fox composer. While each of the
scores on this album has its virtues, the time was not a particularly
successful one for the films represented. Each was a financial failure
and, with the exception of
The large majority of music on this album is from
Garden of Evil, a Western with its fair share of rambunctious
cues for chases and vistas. Herrmann's driving drum motif for the middle
portion of the score is bracketed by large, ominous and, in the end,
heroic themes.
Prince of Players has a more theatrical feel, with
the melancholy fanfares of Shakespearean tragedies that resemble,
perhaps not surprisingly, later ventures by Patrick Doyle. Rounding out
the album is
King of the Khyber Rifles, a rousing score of a
swashbuckling nature. One of Herrmann's better love themes and a tint of
ethnic influence are countered by ambitious action music dominated by
Herrmann's favorite combination of enhanced brass and flutes. The album
itself, however, is somewhat of a curiosity. All three of the scores
represented are certainly worthy for release. They are, however,
available in some form or another in other places. Both
Garden of
Evil and
Prince of Players had been released just prior (with
new performances in digital sound) by the Marco Polo label, and these
releases are commonly considered to be excellent and, by some accounts,
far superior to the originals. Additionally,
King of the Khyber
Rifles was recorded with high style by the legendary Charles
Gerhardt, and his version contains even more of the original score
(including the "Storming the Mountain" cue that is missing from this
album). There had also been a very decent bootleg of the original
recording of
King of the Khyber Rifles on the secondary market
for quite some time. Then again, there will be those Herrmann fans who
will demand a renewed availability of the original recordings, and this
second volume of "Bernard Herrmann at Fox" accomplishes just that.
Overall, however, because this album simply reprises material available
in better forms elsewhere, the first volume in the series remains the
far better recommendation.
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