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Author	Topic: HERRMANN: THREE WORLDS OF GULLIVER- NEW VARESE RECORDING

azahid99 Oscar® Nominee	Folks, The Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Joel McNeely have recorded the complete score for Bernard Herrmann's THREE WOLRDS OF GULLIVER!! This was recorded about 2 months back for release on Varese Sarabande records. Anyone know the release date? mer Zahid
posted 09-07-2000 07:38 PM PT (US)

Chris Kinsinger Oscar® Winner	This is one of Bernard Herrmann's GREATEST scores! I really hope that McNeely's conducting mirrors the original score. What great news! I'm eager to get this one!
posted 09-07-2000 09:52 PM PT (US)

MWRuger Oscar® Winner	Can't wait for this one! I will have to get it the day it comes out. Yummy! Now FSM will do the Beneath the 12 Mile Reef or Obsession, that will make my year!
posted 09-07-2000 10:10 PM PT (US)

JClark Oscar® Winner	This is definitely good news. But for those of us who have the OST CD, how much new music will there be? I'll buy it anyway, but for Varese's sake I hope the "complete score" contains plenty of unreleased stuff, because the old complaints about McNeeley are sure to be flying around.
posted 09-08-2000 08:38 AM PT (US)

Chris Kinsinger Oscar® Winner	EXCUSE ME, JClark... an Original Soundtrack CD of The Three Worlds Of Gulliver??? It doesn't exist. ...DOES IT??? I have Herrmann's re-recording of Gulliver, in the form of a suite, but to my knowledge there has never been a soundtrack of this score.
posted 09-08-2000 09:39 PM PT (US)

Lou Goldberg Oscar® Winner	Varese you suck! Go to blazes! Acid. Vitriol. The Marnie re-record was a botch and now you're turning to do yet another score we already have in the original tracks. How about Williamsburg or Blue Denim or 12 Mile Reef or Companions in Nightmare or something we really need? How about another Herrmann at Fox volume of orig tracks. (and put them out complete!) 'cuz you're botching all these re-records anyway. Thinking about it, I don't want you to re-record another note of Herrmann you slobs. Close up shop already. I'm a Herrmann fan and you're taking advantage of my love to fill your wallets and leaving me with crap in return. And now Gulliver, one of my all-time favorites. I shudder thinking about all the bad tempos, mis-noting, airbrushed sound you're going to perpetrate on this fine score. I have my Cloud Nine CD. I'll make sure I get your CD as a cdr if I want to hear it. I won't pay you a cent for it. You don't deserve to make another penny off Herrmann's corpse you vultures. Get lives and values already. This is not good news. This is sh-t. [This message has been edited by Lou Goldberg (edited 08 September 2000).]
posted 09-08-2000 09:50 PM PT (US)

Mark Olivarez Oscar® Winner	Yes Chris there is an original soundtrack. I have it. It is on Cloud Nine Records, they also have a cd of Mysterious Island. I still see the CD in stores so it is probably still available in your neck of the woods. They are both marketed by Silva Screen. Hmmm I wonder if this means there will be a re-recording of Mysterious Island? The original is missing a couple of cues including the Bee sequence. I kinda agree with Lou though. Let's get some Herrmann that isn't available instead of scores that are already out. Although I can't fault the re-recordings, I think they are great. I do wish McNeely had done The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Debney's conducting is a bit slow in some areas especially the main titles.
posted 09-09-2000 12:45 AM PT (US)

Nicolai P. Zwar Oscar® Winner	That is very good news! The Varese recordings of Bernard Herrmann's scores have been good to excellent (McNeely's Twilight Zone recording is among the very best), I am looking forward very much to this release. Especially since the original soundtrack recordings of a lot of Bernard Herrmann's work don't do justice to his music and sound like they were taped on an old dictating machine hidden underneath a coat. NP: Anton Webern Six Bagatelles Op. 9 Kronos Quartet (Nonesuch) [This message has been edited by Nicolai P. Zwar (edited 09 September 2000).]
posted 09-09-2000 08:57 AM PT (US)

Shaun Rutherford Oscar® Winner	sound like they were taped on an old dictating machine hidden underneath a coat. That was great! Shaun
posted 09-09-2000 09:42 AM PT (US)

Lou Goldberg Oscar® Winner	Maybe the poor recordings of Herrmann's soundtracks don't do justice to his work but neither do bad renditions even if the sound is better. I was NOT happy with the Twilight Zone re-record. Really the only passable ones so far have been Trouble With Harry and Vertigo and the Vertigo organ is still off-pitch and the Harry....oh never mind. It's coming out whether I like it or not. And if you guys are happy with it, fine, then it's a plus. And I haven't heard it yet so who knows, miracles can happen, even when you record the whole album in one day. But I'd rather see other titles and more original tracks or closer to the mark re-records. NP: Exploring the Unknown (Leith Stevens)
posted 09-10-2000 12:30 AM PT (US)

Nicolai P. Zwar Oscar® Winner	Well, if you mean by "closer to the mark" "closer to the original soundtrack recording" I need to say this: in most cases I don't care diddly squat whether or not a re-recording of a film score sounds exactly like the recording heard in the movie. I am listening to music, and when a conductor performs a particular score, not matter whether it's Mahler or Herrmann, I want to hear a performance of music, not an emulation of a passed recording of the music. I certainly do not always agree with the late Sergiu Celibidache's views, but I can somewhat see his refusal to release recordings of his performances and his dismissal of canned music. Now I am certainly all in favor of recordings, but to nail a piece of music to a particular recording of that music is to suffocate it. Music needs to be performed and re-performed, heard and re-heard. What matters is not that a performance of a piece of music manages to sound exactly like another performance of that piece of music, what matters is that the performacne does the music justice. The Varese recordings of Herrmann's scores have all been exceptinally well done. One can hear that they are labours of love and appreciation of the music, and that's what counts for me. Chances are if a score can't bear re-interpretation by other conductors it's not a score that's worth all that much to begin with. NP: Alex North The Misfits Ryko (Wouldn't mind Goldsmith to re-record this one either)
posted 09-10-2000 03:01 AM PT (US)

Guenther Koegebehn Oscar® Winner	McNeely's Vertigo uses only one harp instead of two. He cuts 4 bars from "The Tower", etc. The best VERTIGO is James Conlan's version, IMO
posted 09-10-2000 07:24 AM PT (US)

Nicolai P. Zwar Oscar® Winner	I have heard about the James Conlon recording but yet to get my fingers on it. I would really love to get this (and not just because Mr. Conlon is one of the major conductors working here). Do you have any release info, catalog number etc? Would make things easier.
posted 09-10-2000 11:04 AM PT (US)

Guenther Koegebehn Oscar® Winner	quote: Originally posted by Nicolai P. Zwar: I have heard about the James Conlon recording but yet to get my fingers on it. I would really love to get this (and not just because Mr. Conlon is one of the major conductors working here). Do you have any release info, catalog number etc? Would make things easier. The problem is, it is not a regular release. It acompanies a book to an "art-crap" experiment by Douglas Gordon called "feature film": LINK 1 LINK 2 The problem is that the CD is not mastered too well and everything is one large 75 min track! [Message edited by PeterK on 09-11-2000]
posted 09-11-2000 02:46 AM PT (US)

Nicolai P. Zwar Oscar® Winner	Thanks for the links, Guenther. Now, can you tell me anything about the "art-crap" experiment, too? What kind of a book is it?
posted 09-11-2000 02:16 PM PT (US)

Cole Oscar® Winner	yay
posted 09-11-2000 06:12 PM PT (US)

Guenther Koegebehn Oscar® Winner	Nicolai, the quote below says a lot about the project and sums up what I've heard from others: quote: Originally posted by "Jacbear" on the Herrmann board: Apart from James Conlon's beautiful rendition of the Vertigo score, I think there is very little to commend this piece of pretentious rubbish. Unlike many other people who walked out after about 30 minutes, I just closed my eyes, say back and enjoyed the music, even though the sound system at the Royal Festival Hall (strange venue for this kind of thing) was sadly inadequate. ?
posted 09-12-2000 01:25 AM PT (US)

Guenther Koegebehn Oscar® Winner	Or better follow the whole thing on: http://muir.svf.uib.no/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000433.html
posted 09-12-2000 01:27 AM PT (US)

Lou Goldberg Oscar® Winner	It's funny. Herrmann used to say that music was a living, breathing thing that needed new interpretations to discover new things about it. He disliked his soundtracks and wanted them all to be in suite form. I'm not even sure he wanted people to even listen to his film music. But for as great a composer as Herrmann was, there's a lot he said I disagree with. I do not dislike some re-recorded versions of film music. Kunzel did versions of War of the Worlds and Gunfight at the OK Corral and El Cid that are amazing. And other conductors have done superb renderings. Now what makes them superb? Is it just because they sound like the soundtrack performance? No, Herrmann's own conducting of some of his scores with slower tempos often turned out great. Even his version of Jane Eyre which sounds so off from the film that it shouldn't even be called Jane Eyre is still a great listen. No, the great re-recordings have either stayed faithful to the score, played wiuth great spirit, or found a new way of doing things that works. I'm familiar with Herrmann's scores from their original versions. That gives me some idea of what this music is supposed to sound like. You can play with that--think of all the different timings of all the versions of Vertigo that others have recorded--but the final version had better work on its' own as a piece of music. I don't think the McNeely versions work as good listening and not just because they're off from the original performance, but because they're lousy on their own. The differences between his version and the soundtrack version are only one tool to measure this for me and make that apparent. I'm sure that someone could conduct Marnie and interpret it in a certain way that was different from the soundtrack version and still make it work for me but McNeely isn't the guy to do it.
posted 09-12-2000 08:27 PM PT (US)

Nicolai P. Zwar Oscar® Winner	Interesting indeed... I didn't know Herrmann said this as well. Just as a side note: I am familiar with many of Herrmann's original soundtrack recordings as well as a bunch of his own re-recordings, too. But anyway, Lou, I basically agree with everything you just wrote in your post up there (some of it I could have even written myself). So we do not differ about the philosophy of re-recordings, but merely about the success of certain ones. I enjoy the McNeely recording of Vertigo very much, though I also own the original Muir Mathieson recording. NP: Hans J. Salter & Paul Dessau House of Frankenstein Moscow Symphony Orchestra/Stromberg (Marco Polo)
posted 09-14-2000 12:29 PM PT (US)

Marcelo Ferreyra Oscar® Winner	To Mark Olivarez (Or anybody interested) The Bee sequence that is not in the OST of the Misterious Island OST (Because the tape has being lost) is recorded in a suite conducted by Herman on the London label. Music from great film classics 448 948-2 It includes suites from Citizen Kane Jane Eyre The Devil and Daniel Webster The Snows Of Kilimanjaro Mysterious Island Jason And The Argonauts The cues from Misterious Island are: Prelude The Ballon (1.58) The Giant Crab (2.53) The Giant Bee (3.37) The Giant Bird (2.52) (About 10 minutes of music, and the perfect companion for the CNA cd)
posted 09-15-2000 07:10 PM PT (US)

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