Customer Reviews

Fantastic Journey

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4 star:		(1)
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This is another of the Telarc label's collections put together under the conductor Erich Kunzel and performed by the Cincinnati pops orchestra. Like all Telarc discs, the sound is pure digital and hence can really pack a punch. Moreover, Kunzel often chooses some vey nice gems in his collections -- e.g. the neglected Last Starfighter piece here. However, the problem arises in the fact that many pieces of film score don't play well with a large orchestra -- they loose their focused intensity. The Batman here suffers from such a flaw and is weaker than the original score. The Pops orchestra is best with march-type themes, of which there are not enough on this album to make it outshine the original soundtracks from which it draws.

This CD has been around for a while now but it is still truly a good compilation of Science Fiction film music given a new dimension by being recorded digitally. The BATMAN selections composed by Danny Elfman are very powerful combing rousing elements with moody enigmatic passages. Most of the other selections are short or confined to one piece. The selections from TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER and POLTERGEIST all composed by Jerry Goldsmith are all performed with passion and demonstrate Goldsmith's great versatility. Bernard Herrmann's "Outer Space" from THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is brief but in effect makes it all the more powerful by its great innovation and lasting impact. The WAR OF THE WORLDS "Prelude" by Leith Stevens was a great surprise.

Terrific performances of some great movies. I loved most of these movies and was excited to find a cd with all these themes. A great selection!

Maestro Kunzel has gathered together a mostly-entertaining mix of music from various s/f movies. As usual with these collections, the CD contains selections that are hard to come by (if not impossible) on a soundtrack or any other recorded source. Not all of the tracks work, however. Music from "Moonwalker" is annoying, and the theme from "War of the Worlds" is just plain weird. Not Kunzel's fault, I know, but those pieces tend to (for me) mar the overall likeability of the album. That said, there are definitely keepers: The theme from "The Black Hole," the soundtrack to which was unavailable on CD anywhere until just recently and which by itself is worth the cost; the sweet chorus of Carol Ann's Theme from "Poltergeist"; the themes from "The Day the Earth Stood Still," "The Beast Master" (I am Dar!) and "The Last Starfighter."

Unfortunately, these movie collections tend to waste too much disk space on sound effects. Often inserted as short introductions to a piece of music, most can be endured quickly and forgotten. But on this CD, a whole track's worth following "The Black Hole" is devoted to the inane cacophony of electronic gibberish, space that would have been much better served by playing, say, the Love Theme from "Superman."

Still, there are more things to like on this album than there are to dislike.

I was involved in the creation of this album (although I don't appear on the credits) and I helped Mr. Kunzel choose 5 of the tracks appearing here.

2. Outer Space from The Day the Earth Stood Still
7. End Title from The Boy Who Could Fly
6. End Title from Twilight Zone: The Movie
9. End Title from Explorers
16. Main Title from The Last Starfighter

Around 1989, Mr. Kunzel was kind enough to invite me and a couple of guests to Cincinnati to see his Happy Trails concert. Outside the concert hall were Blacksmiths, cows, horses; inside small calves in corrals made of hay bales! Impressive.

My guests and I had been asked to come in WESTERN garb. The concert started out with a hangman's noose being swung by our host as a reminder of just what kind of show this was!
My guests and I had a GREAT time and that concert later became an album.

Turns out, after the concert in the spacious green room, Mr. Kunzel had trouble getting out of his borrowed garb; Nice six-shooters (could have been real too, I wasn't all that sure). Seems those boots should have been tested first! It took me a few minutes to help him out of them.

While we were talking, I casually offered him my song/cut list and timings on the pieces I was interested in. Graciously he collected my offering and told me he'd check on it.

Months later, I saw the cut list on this album and bought it on the spot. ALL my requests were in the album. This was a RESPONSIVE creative team.

Mr. Kunzel has a talent of making arraignments to sequences that sound more like the original tracks than the creators of them. His amplifications of the descants and harmony lines accentuate the actual melody rather than detract from it. Talking to other conductors and fans, this opinion is usually shared (I was in the business decades later). I think that way in my own music and it's shared in his.

The only part that was slightly sad was when Mr. Safan was invited to conduct "The Last Starfighter" and I wasn't...umm, invited. Oh well!

Still, the production was amazing, I learned a lot and I thank again Mr. Kunzel for being a REALLY great host. Ok, so it's not 1989 anymore, but I'd do it again :)