Customer Reviews

It's a Wonderful Life /Christmas Carol /Miracle on 34th Street /Sundance Film Music Series Vol.1

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

 

 

If you're a Christmas music junkie - and I am - then this is a worthwhile purchase. It's a Wonderful Life dominates the CD, but that's not a bad thing. The best-known music from Miracle on 34th Street is included and enables you to see Kris Kringle walking down the NYC street where he tells a shopkeeper that the reindeer are out of order. The scores are beautifully played; people who hate Christmas probably won't even notice they're listening to Christmas music. This is a lovely CD to add to one's collection.

While the beautifully played film scores of "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Miracle on 34th Street" receive top billing, the real star of this recording is Richard Addinsell's reconstructed score of the classic 1951 film "A Christmas Carol"(or "Scrooge") starring Alistair Sim. Apparently Pinewood Studio purged their files in the 1960s and many great film scores - most notably Addinsell's "Christmas Carol" - were lost. But the masterful reconstruction and faithful interpretation featured on this recording goes a long way to restoring this wonderful music to the prominence it deserves. The score is arranged in the form of a Suite, with each selection placed in the chronological order in which it's introduced in the film. The arranger chose his material wisely and quite successfully recreates the dark, brooding atmosphere of the film, without sacrificing it's lighter moments. The "Christmas Carol" score only occupies about 10 minutes of this CD, but it's well worth the price to acquire this rare gem. If you can't find it on Amazon, it may be available at iTunes.

Dimitri Tiomkin's original score to "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) is reconstructed here in its entirety and beautifully channeled
through David Newman and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Movements only partially used and others dropped from the film altogether (amounting to 14 cues) -are restored and presented in their original glory.
Tiomkin's intense, lively score is ethereal, sentimental, dark, mysterious and menacing- one "of surreal Americana" throughout which he weaves musical quotes of folk songs and Christmas Carols current in the time period between 1919 and the (then) "modern" age (1945), reflective of the various life stages of the main character George Bailey.

For a recording and cd over 20 years old (I purchased it in 1989), the audio quality is very good, despite the peculiar dynamic characteristics shared with other Telarc cds of the time - which to my ear, sounded as if the recording microphones were set up at the uttermost rear of the auditorium, and the final recording mixed a tad too low.
Still, this cd remains among my favorite "Christmas" and soundtrack albums.

Hopefully future dvd editions of "It's a Wonderful Life" will offer the option of hearing the complete score accompanying the film as originally intended.