Customer Reviews

Hollywood's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Erich Kunzel, once again comes through with another terrific album of movie music. On this album you will find preludes, themes and main title music from some of Hollywood's most loved movies. Films from as early as 1936's "Modern Times", through to 1992's "Far and Away", are represented here. The Cincinnati Pops Orchestra are as wonderful as ever, and the 20-bit digital sound system makes for unequalled sound quality. A pleasing highlight for me, is the wonderful "Moonglow" which starts off track 5. The jazz trio of piano, bass and drums eventually is joined by the orchestra for the theme from "Picnic". Then we have the beautiful waltz from "Around the world in eighty days". With the wonderful accordion solo, you can imagine being on a merry-go-round. This is truly a beautiful album...a must for lovers of orcestral music.

Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops' treatment of film scores on this second tribute to Hollywood are somewhat more pleasing than Volume I. The selections are more intriguing and demonstrate a more positive approach to film scores and their value as true musical art forms. There is quite a diverse representation of music here. The incredibly powerful main title to MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (Bronislaw Kaper) juxtaposed with the bittersweet and romantic love theme to SPARTACUS (Alex North) and the intimately tender love theme to FRIENDLY PERSUASION (Dimitri Tiomkin) are masterfully achieved. I have never been that enamored with this CD's 20-bit digital recording but it has grown on me. Still, I highly recommend and enjoy this CD.

There is a great collection of music to be found here. There are many great renditions. The "2001, a Space Odyssey Fanfare" was outstanding. "Book of Days" from "Far and Away" had a very unique approach. I recommend this one deeply, oh yes I do, by far and away!

I love this cd. It is the greatest. Moonglow and Midnight Cowboy are my favorites.

I watched a ton of movies growing up through middle & highschool, so these Kunzel/Cincinnati Pops CDs were like gold for me. They were released before the age of the crappy Silva compilations. Telarc was, at the time, THE standard for early digital audio and it shows. The production values on these CDs were big, bold, and full of ear pleasing sound even on some of the lesser quality themes.

Most recently for me, the most stand-out tracks here are the popular Maurice Jarre works (who passed the week before I'm writing this review). We get the best sounding re-recordings of "Lara's Theme" from Dr Zhivago and an interesting concert arrangement of "Lawrence of Arabia". These are beautiful samplings of Jarre's works and make a fascinating unintentional tribute to the composer.

For the most part however, this CD offers up standard fare. We get Chariots of Fire which sounds interesting and a bit bolder performed by a full orchestra rather than the original Vangelis synths. We also get rather uninspired pops-style performance of Goldfinger that sounds like its performed by a highschool football band, complete with overly done percussion.

There's the standard film lover's tracks too.. Rocky, Ben Hur, Exodus, Love Story, A Summer Place, the continuously misused Jaws theme, and John Barry's lovely Out of Africa.

My personal gem beyond the Jarre tracks are Michael Gore's wonderful piano score for Terms of Endearment. One of the few chick flicks that I can actually sit through and almost shed a tear. Gore's theme is lovely and very hummable after the first listen.

For film music noobs, Kunzel's compilations are a must. They present the music with a huge symphonic range of sound that is very professional and dead on.

For fans of the music it's great to listen to somebody else's interpretation of the scores, but we'd all much rather have the original recordings. That is if we can afford them all in today's tough times.

I have to wonder sometimes about the selection process for a CD titled "Hollywood's Greatest Hits Volume 2." For instance, the bombastic prelude by Alex North for "2001: A Space Odyssey" was never used in the film; how could it have been a hit? I can see why Stanley Kubrik opted for Strauss. The memorable Parade of the Charioteers from "Ben Hur" was on Volume 1; do we really need another excerpt from the same film on Volume 2? The selection from "Grand Canyon" seemed merely noisy, and Book of Days from "Far and Away" neglects the movie's orchestral score by John Williams.

Having said that, the rest of the CD does not disappoint. The theme from "The Godfather" and Smile from "Modern Times" are obvious choices for this second Hollywood album. Add to that the excellent arrangements and performances of music from "Mutiny on the Bounty," "Zorba the Greek," and "Midnight Cowboy" (the latter by the estimable John Barry, whose sweeping score for "Dances With Wolves" is also heard here), and you have a CD that's worth listening to again and again.

There is something about listening to classic movie themes. You get an encapsilated view of the film in your head that not only takes you back to the story on the screen, but also to your personal events of that time you first saw that film. How old you were, was it a movie needed for pure escape, did the story have an enduring message or did you go away saying, "what was I thinking...that was two hours gone forever; now how do I get that bad taste out of my brain?" A good score can make a more enduring impression than the film itself at times and this collection is a good example of this. The orchestral production takes you back to sitting in front of screen. A good collection for a rainy afternoon.

Great scores, brings the images of the movies back to my mind, I loved it.

The content list seems impressive, but actually the selections are mundane and uninspired. There is lots of dissonance and the quality of the recordings is mixed. Seems so unlike Erich Kunzel, or Telarc for that matter.

For those that purchase soundtrack collages to have a variety of songs and themes, then this is good for you. Unfortunately, these tracks didn't have the signature Erich Kunzel version of the songs as he had on other soundtrack mix CDs. It was more like just that, a mix CD of different soundtracks and scores. However, it was a good buy in the fact that the tracks chosen had excellent sound quality and a sense of harmony.