Now to get Rebecca....

Kind of sad no one else around has anything to say on this one....where's jjh, Joan Hue,et al????

NP:OHMSS Expanded(Barry)Ahhh, my signature tune Best theme song a man could ask for!

JJH also can't buy Far From Heaven, and probably won't be able to find Nemesis or whatever else is supposed to be released by Varese. slow asses. but there are one ZILLION copies of Friday After Next. how sad.

I listened again to Rebecca last night. great, great stuff by McNeely and Co.

On a side note, I caught a clip or 2 from Man From Elysian Fields last night, as they were doing a retro on James Coburn. The bits of score I heard were very nice.

I'm very eager to hear this, but how does it compare to the marvelous suite Charles Gerhardt did years ago? Seems like that covered the score nicely - not everything, of course, but still...

The Gerhardt suite is a terrific overview of the score, but you have to hear the full thing to get all the great development of the various themes IMO....this is a score that demands a thorough listen, not something you could(initially) throw on in the background. Over time perhaps, but the first few plays should be with attentive ears This falls into the category where themes and motifs are organically grown over the course of the film, not just a parade of hit and miss cues, so its hard to point to one specific cue as THE highlight.
There are so many great cues heard here for the first time...or are they? I seem to recall a 'shoe foot' (get it?) of this out, paired with a few minutes of Demitrius & The Gladiators. Didn't this version have the lost Prologue cue as well?

As far as performance comparison to Gerhardt's, McNeely and the RSNO acquit themselves nicely, and infuse enough passion in Norma's habenera theme without going overboard. Nice sound as well, none of that 'crank up the stereo to 11' concert hall.

While we're talking Waxman, have to put another good word in for Morgan/Stromberg's MR SKEFFINGTON....great Straussian(Richard) romp, the above about 'organically grown' scoring applies here as well. Ahhh, the days when film scores grew on trees

The Varese album is a great listen, rented the film on DVD to watch tonight, hope it isn't too soapy for my tastes. Couldn't find the Criterion disc, so I just picked up the old Anchor Bay DVD to watch. Nice backstory on this film in the Varese notes, that Selznick was a wacky dude And again, there is this reference to Waxman writing an insurance score for GWTW(you'll find a thread in the archives here about this).

It's funny to me that you guys who have been living with this music for years and years always gripe about these McNeely/Varese jobs, but then again I probably would too, had I lived with the original recordings for all eternity. I would go ballistic if someone goofed up Brian May's THE ROAD WARRIOR in a re-recording as well. For the record, the RSNO and McNeely do a great job to my ears, and even attained that 'Marco Polo' sound in certain passages of REBECCA.

Finally got my lazy butt to buying it, and boy should I have done that sooner.

Waxman's score is incredible from top to bottom.
The themes and variations are soooo excelent. The non-thematic cues are never boring.
Waxman delivers a perfect musical narrative which tells the story all on its own. There is almost no need to see the movie; the score says everything one needs to hear.

McNeely and the Scots deliver a first rate performance.

The sound is very good, offering excellent definition and clarity. (There are tiny things I don't like about the sonics, but I'll shut up about them.)

Thanks for the backup on this Dinko, glad someone else out there has heard this....great package, it's the recording that keeps on giving, to my ears

personally, I have to go with the newer sonics on some of these Golden Age recordings...I was listening to the Fox CD of Jane Eyre this morning, and it really sounds horrendous, not to mention missing around 30mins. of the score. Time to track down the (reportedly) very good Adriano/Marco Polo recording of this Herrmann classic.

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Originally posted by perfpitch:
Nothing conducted by Adriano is very good -- the JANE EYRE is marginally better than his atrocious recording of REBECCA, but barely...

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