I just bought the late Charles Gerhardt's 1983 re-recording of selections from John Williams' Return of the Jedi. It is very good indeed. It's interesting to hear other parts of the orchestra, and other tempi, etc.
The sound quality is also excellent.

I suppose my only complaint is the short 46-minute running time -- made for LP (?). I would have loved to hear what Gerhardt could have done with the Luke and Vader final battle, with the men's chorus and all. To me, that is probably the best part of the entire ROTJ score.

Is the Empire Strikes Back CD this well done? I saw it, too, but declined, in favor of Lalo Schifrin's Tango.

Did Gerhardt re-record the ANH score?

I've also been wondering many times if I should get the ESB album...?

Here are the Gerhardt CDs I have (admittedly, all except the first 3 are self-made copies):

• Music from John Williams' Classic Film Scores - Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars
  Without a doubt the most important CD in my life: Saw it, heard it, and I was hooked on film music. Never cared for a single note of film or classical music before.
  "Main Title", "The Little People Work", "Princess Leia", "The Final Battle", "The Throne Room and End Titles" plus "Here They Come!" (included by initiative of Gerhardt; Williams didn't originally intend to make this one a concert piece) and a 21 minute suite from CE3
  
• Return of the Jedi
  I'd also like to hear a Gerhardt recording of the choral stuff - maybe in substitution for one of the two Forest Battle tracks
  
• Sunset Boulevard - The Classic Film Scores of Franz Waxman
  "Prince Valiant", "A Place in the Sun", "The Bride of Frankenstein", "Sunset Boulevard", "Old Acquaintenance", "Rebecca", "The Philadelphia Story" and "Taras Bulba"
  
• Citizen Kane - The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Herrmann
  "On Dangerous Ground", "Citizen Kane" (with Kiri Te Kanawa performing the "Aria from Salammbo"!), "Beneath the 12-Mile Reef", "Hangover Square" ("Concerto Macabre for piano and orchestra") and "White Witch Doctor"
  
• Elizabeth and Essex - The Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold
  "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex", "The Prince and the Pauper", "Anthony Adverse", "The Sea Wolf", "Deception", "Another Dawn" and "Of Human Bondage"
  
• Captain Blood - Classic Film Scores for Errol Flynn
  "The Adventure of Don Juan", "The Sea Hawk", "Captain Blood" ("Ship in the Night", a short but wonderful piece that is NOT on the Marco Polo CD), "They Died with Their Boots On", "Dodge City", "Objective Burma!", "The Sun Also Rises" and "The Adventure of Robin Hood"
  
• Casablanca - Classic Film Scores for Humphrey Bogart
  (lost my track listing)
  
• ? - Classic Film Score for Bette Davis
  (lost my track listing and can't even remember the title)
  

Get 'em all, film music won't get much better than this.

Captain From Castille: Classic Film Scores of Alfred Newman (The Robe, AIrport, Song of Bernadette, Wuthering Heights and others)

Spellbound: Classic Film scores of Miklos Rozsa (Spellbound (gotta love the Thermin), The Lost Weekend, Ivanhoe, Jungle Book and others)

Classic Film scores for Bette Davis (Dark Victory, All About Eve, The Letter, Mr Skeffington and others)

Sea Hawk: The Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold
(Sea Hawk, Juarez, Kings Row, Captain Blood and others)

Casablanca has the awesome Caine Mutiny march which I highly reccommend.

quote:

---

Originally posted by MWRuger:
Marian, Have you tried WWW.CDDB.COM? They will have the track lists that you are looking for.

---

I knew this. Frankly, I've always been too lazy, and furthermore, I don't even know where one of the 2 CDs is at the moment - don't make covers, and you won't find your discs... But by sheer accident, I found a back cover file for the Bogart album on my hard drive today. I'll have to print that one. I've learnt that I can enjoy a CD much more if I have the track titles.

quote:

---

Originally posted by MWRuger:
Sea Hawk: The Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold
(Sea Hawk, Juarez, Kings Row, Captain Blood and others)

---

There's Captain Blood stuff on that one, too??? I HAVE to have it!

Re CDDB once again: This database fascinates me. It seems that nearly EVERY existing CD is already included there. I think I've encountered exactly one CD so far which couldn't be identified. That doesn't surprise me so much when it comes to song albums; there's usually exactly one version of those. But classical music - tons of different recordings for one single composition. The CDDB knows them all.

CDDB is pretty cool. I have stumped it a few times but mainly because when you do a CD-R of a commercially release album, unless the timing track is fairly close to the original release it can't identify the the album although it may return "Close" hits.

"Newer albums"? You mean, there are more non-RCA albums than the ESB recording?