Hollywood Stars: Music from the Films of Sean
Connery: (Compilation) By the late 1990's, Silva Screen had hit
their stride in their production of large-scale symphonic re-recordings
of film music featuring The City of Prague Philharmonic. As they had
done before and would do again in the future, they released several
actor-specific compilations in the summer of 1998. Under the common
title of "Hollywood Stars," the three concurrent releases of the series
were devoted to films starring Sean Connery, Kevin Costner, and Mel
Gibson. Compilations related to Connery in particular were common in the
1990's, as the actor continued his success in the action genre and a new
generation of popular composers provided their services for his films.
Silva had released a "Music from the Films of Sean Connery" album in
1993 with some of the same selections (identical performances) as the
expanded 1998 "Hollywood Stars" album. Interestingly, the other two
"Hollywood Stars" albums released concurrently were both HDCDs, whereas
the Connery one was not. The likely reason for this difference was the
re-use of the old recordings that had not taken advantage of the current
recording technologies. The only significant difference in the sound of
the 1993 and 1998 albums is the change in the synth programmers used for
the albums. By the 1998 albums, Silva Screen had acquired the services
of Mark Ayres to provide the necessary synthetic music, so tracks like
The Name of the Rose will sound different in the newer generation
of Silva albums. The quality of performances by The City of Prague
Philharmonic had also improved in general over the five years, though
they were still capable of recording some painful interpretations at
times. Two of the more ambitious cues to be added to the 1998 album
included
The Great Train Robbery and
The Man Who Would Be
King, both of which received strong and enthusiastic performances by
the ensemble. The most recent score represented at the time had been
The Rock, which is a bizarre recording; anytime you have John
Barry-enthusiast Nic Raine arranging a Media Ventures score, you're
likely to get a strange result. Ayres' synthetic blend with the
orchestra is competent, but the overall mix is inaccurately light on
bass elements.
One significant failure that would continue to plague
Silva albums in the future is the lifeless, jazz-less recording of
The Russia House. Why ensembles refuse to employ a saxophone for
its recording is baffling, for the use of a synthesizer or clarinet as a
replacement simply doesn't work. The Ayres performance of
The Name of
the Rose is not as vibrant as the previous version pressed by Silva.
The following hymn from
The Hunt for Red October is a highlight
of the album, though the translation of lyrics into English (despite the
Russian-inspired, heavy male voices of the Crouch End Festival Chorus)
could take some adjustment for fans of the score. Silva debuted its
recording of "The Trees" from
Medicine Man here, abandoning the
enjoyable medley of music from the film on the previous album. Its
Barry-like tones are well handled. The selections from
First
Knight are different from those presented on the first "Cinema
Choral Classics" CD and provide an robust rendition of the love theme
from the final cue of the film. The album then provides three strangely
contrasting tracks, with Ennio Morricone's
The Untouchables (once
again different from a previous recording), Bernard Herrmann's
Marnie, and Barry's
Robin & Marian not meshing well with
each other, however the performance of
Marnie is very crisp. Many
of the James Bond selections carry over from previous Silva albums and
are somewhat generic performances (Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops
always did better with them), though the trite secondary theme "007"
that Barry uses for action sequences in most of his early Bond scores is
presented. Once again, the
Never Say Never Again selection is an
original performance since Silva owns the rights to the score. Michel
Legrand's score is insufferable no matter which cue is included,
however. An extended performance of the James Bond theme on this album
is one that would be available, along with many of these themes, on
Silva's forthcoming "Bond and Beyond" albums. Overall, this is the best
of the three "Hollywood Stars" series released in 1998, mostly because
of some decent key performances and the inclusion of cues from scores
that aren't readily available in their original form.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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The insert includes detailed notes about the scores and films.
