by geejayaye on 11/24/2002
favorite track: 13
 
The trouble with compilation albums is that by their very nature they tend to feature the best of a composer's work (fair enough) and this means the regular collector will probably have most of the collected tracks and may not be so keen to pay for a disc of what's familiar. Of course, some like myself will buy anything with Barry's name on it regardless of how many times we've heard or collected the music.

So this is a recording that I'd recommend to relative newcomers to John Barry's music rather than the regular Barry listener, because with the exception of the track "Moviola" there isn't anything here that the regular Barry listener won't have already heard or have on other discs and some of it many times.

This recording contains Barry's romantic (as in Somewhere In Time) and emotional music (as in Frances). There are a few tracks that aren't that familiar on the compilation disc circuit such as Chaplin, Frances and The Cotton Club, but the rest of the compositions featured here are well known Barry standards. Born Free, Out Of Africa and Dances With Wolves represent his Oscar winners. Some are yawningly familiar (as in "We Have All The Time In The World" and Midnight Cowboy).

The best tracks are the ever lovely Somewhere In Time (seek out the full soundtrack album), the sultry sax of Body Heat and the one new track "Moviola," which is a lovely sweeping piece of music with the strings in full flow and good old Barry brass.

It has to be said that the arrangements don't really add anything new to familiar tunes. In fact I found the slower pace of Midnight Cowboy ruined the track compared to how it sounds on the proper soundtrack album. The whole pace of this album is sedate and while I do accept that the choices here reflect the more mellow Barry sounds (the action scores appear in "Moviola 2"), I did come away from it feeling a bit disappointed, especially as Barry himself has arranged and conducted the album. Everything just seems a little too slow.

Overall, I wish the choices would have been a bit more adventurous and taken cues from his less well known or heard soundtracks such as The Deep, The Dove, Petulia or Peggy Sue Got Married, all of which have lovely mellow pieces in keeping with the style of this album, but which wouldn't be so familiar. Barry was quoted as saying that he was going to include a suite from Raise the Titanic but found he just couldn't get into it. Pity.

So, overall a goodish album, but like all compilations it tends to depend on how many of the collected tracks you already know. If you're not familiar with the majority of the tracks then it's a good guide to the more reflective style of John Barry, but if you have most of the tracks on other albums then I don't think there's a lot here to get excited about bar the new track "Moviola."