RCA’s classical film score series with Chuck Gerhardt never should have gone out of print, so it’s particularly good to see Arkivmusic.com bringing the whole series back “on demand”. These days the rage is to record the complete scores, and even though Korngold’s music is more continuous than most, I can very readily imagine many listeners preferring these shorter selections of suites and individual scenes. You get nothing but the best tunes–indeed, Another Dawn and The Prince and the Pauper became the first movement and finale, respectively, of the Violin Concerto–and an even greater range of mood and contrast than any one work can possibly display.
More to the point, the performances in this series are all splendid, the engineering wonderfully sumptuous, and the selections unfailingly intelligent. For example, we get to hear Korngold’s entire Cello Concerto (all 12 minutes of it, reworked from the music originally in Deception) rather than the single film cue that’s only about half as long. Furthermore, as programs designed for continuous listening, this series was unbeatable. Playing times on these pre-digital-era LP releases aren’t as long as we have come to expect today, but when the quality of the product is this high it would be churlish to complain. Great stuff!
