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| Barry |
John Barry: Zulu: (Compilation) The Silva Screen
label and its lead producer, James Fitzpatrick, have always had a love
affair with the music of John Barry, for their compilations haven't
provided more performances of a single composer's work than Barry's.
After releasing a few much shorter and less energized Barry compilations
early in the 1990s, Silva Screen eventually offered a 2-CD set with over
one hundred new minutes of Barry music in the same fashion with which
they had treated the music of James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, John
Williams, and Bernard Herrmann over the previous year. The difference,
however, is that the Barry set does not fall under the same "Essential
Music of" descriptor by the label because the initial purpose of this
Barry set was to provide a decent stereo release of the music from the
composer's 1964 score to
Zulu. This 2-CD set offers the complete
score to
Zulu as its centerpiece, with cues from films, musicals,
and television commercials rounding out the compilation. The City of
Prague Philharmonic and Crouch End Festival Chorus provide an improved
performance of a wide variety of themes over their previous Barry
performances, some of which were so poor in the early 1990's as to be
unlistenable. For film score collectors, the inclusion of the complete
score from
Zulu is the main attraction. With the original master
sources only existing in mono sound or badly edited attempts to transfer
that mono to stereo, Fitzpatrick called upon veteran Barry orchestrator
Nic Raine to help reconstruct the entire score in much the same way
Raine would later resurrect some of Barry's other famous scores. As
usual, Raine's work is outstandingly true to the original Barry sound.
Every piece of music in the score was reconstructed and performed with
exactly the same number of musicians as the original, which amounted to
about 70 players overall. While this ensemble is well suited to match
the original recording, the raw power of the brass performances in
Zulu would still have been interesting to hear with the full City
of Prague Philharmonic, perhaps as a concert version. The choral cues of
"Men of Harlech" are of immense size by comparison.
Barry's title theme for
Zulu is a tad on the
simplistic and pompous side, but entertaining nevertheless, and its only
true weakness is the repetitive use of it throughout the score's 20
minutes. "First Zulu Appearance and Assault" features the bulk of
Barry's rhythmically predictable action music and becomes tiresome after
three minutes. Not surprisingly,
Zulu is not a very complex
score, but its title theme is strong enough to carry it for listening
purposes. Barry, of course, would revisit the title theme in 1995 for
Cry, The Beloved Country, for which he would tone the theme down
to the haunting performances of solo woodwinds. The remaining tracks on
the compilation aren't those that you'd typically expect to hear on a
commercial Barry compilation, affirming that true Barry collectors are
this set's target. The Sunsilk TV commercial piece is very stylish in
the original James Bond sort of way. The suite from
The
Specialist would have been better off featuring just the final,
sultry "Did You Call Me?" theme. The ten minute suite from
The
Tamarind Seed was the premiere recording for LP or CD from that
score. The massively choral and fully symphonic theme from
The Last
Valley is excellent, and the insert notes feature the accompanying
lyrics. Silva would go on to commission the re-recording of this entire
score a few years later. The closing themes from
Mercury Rising
represent some of Barry's most recent compositions, and their jazzy
undertones pick up right where
The Specialist left off. The
popular and quirky sax and organ theme for
Midnight Cowboy has
plenty of spirit (and it would end up in numerous commercials abroad),
but it's perhaps a too spirited compared to its neighboring tracks. With
the original release of
Frances difficult to find in many places,
this set gives an excellent chance to hear the best the score has to
offer. Rounding out the CD are all strong selections, with the exception
of the unfortunate crawl in pacing caused by
Hammett. The final
suite from 1965's
Mister Moses, which like
Zulu was also
reconstructed, is better than the version that appears with the film.
Overall, this set is definitely for the hardest Barry aficionados; the
sound quality is excellent and the ensemble's performances are often
superior to the originals. Just don't expect the same old tunes.
**** @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 26,876 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert contains extensive notes about each of the tracks, as well
as thorough credits.
