I suggest you return to practicing your ESP skills with looking at the backs of cards and sensing what they are.

This is for Ford and anyone else, even Susan Moross. It's the Moross challenge. Very simple. Pull out your Varese CD of the original War Lord soundtrack and pull out the first Silva Moross CD. Play the main title as it appears on both. Decide honestly which you think has the better performance, is the version you'd like to hear in the future. Compare how actually different the two versions sound and figure that every cue on the Silva CD is that degree off from the cues from the original film version for whatever film it is.

So, am I just being an over-perfectionist here? Is my hearing shot? A lot of people thought Silva's Bond Back in Action was great when it just made me wail the cry of the damned I thought it was so bad. I'm being sincere when I say I think these things aren't good. Is there someone else out there who thinks as I do and could verify that I'm not all alone out here acting like some lunatic?

I am surprised Ford is taking up your challenges, Lou. When he worked for Silva he did this all the time, but seemed to give it up when he no longer had any projects with them. It was his goal to keep me from sleeping well at nights because I said I really disliked re-recordings (this was before John Morgan and Co. were on the scene).

For what it's worth.

The original tracks in the movie are also very good, but non-existant now.

Silva also released Kilar's The Ninth Gate, and you can't tell it's the same orchestra that botched Star Trek on the Goldsmith Omen compilation.

Raine had to do it by ear. This is not an easy task for anyone. not only do you have to get the key right, you have to work out rhythms, time signatures, and all the various transpositions of orchestral instruments, and how they relate to key.

not only that, but to have to hear orchestral detail. and if the film's the only source, the task is that much more difficult.
Granted, it's only half an hour of music, if that, and Barry's orchestrations are a tad predictable, but still.
Fantastic job, and an overall exciting performance, especially for someone that might be a John Barry novice.

HOwever, I can see how their rerecordings can annoy some people. The new recordings are very obviously orchestrated differently than the originals...but the vastly improved sound quality and the unreleased music make up for it in my opinion.

If the original, Moross-conducted versions were around, sure, that would be great, but since that's not the case, I'm very grateful for the Silva CD.

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Originally posted by SBD:
Just how badly was the Goldsmith compilation botched (because I plan on purchasing it one day)?

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Aside from the AWFUL London(!?!?)choir used on First Knight and The Omen, I thought the Goldsmith Essential 2CD was pretty good. Awesome hair raising performance of The Great Train Robbery, great electronic recreations on Under Fire, The Swarm is very good,ok Star Trek performance, great Boys from Brazil, more spot on electronics for the Baby end title. Nothing that new if your a fanatic, but I still cart this album around as a good concert type set.

Also thought that RAISE THE TITANIC was excellent, as is most of the Space 3 compil.

NP:The Lord of the Rings(Rosenman)

I took my own Moross challenge.

I hadn't played the Silva CD in some time, my memory of glaring errors keeping me away from it.

Actually, as far as versions go, it's a lot better done and closer to the mark than a lot of Silva CDs.

I played the two War Lord titles. Silva's is longer because it adds material. Given any two performances of the same music, I can't imagine that things would be completely reproducible. It's just a question of how close they can come and whether the re-recorded version works as an enjoyable experience in its own right.

The Silva version eased out of my system. The original came blaring out.

I thought about this. The Silva version sounded like the piece would sound if I were sitting in the balcony of an concert hall auditorium listening to an orchestra do it. The soundtrack is mixed as it would sound coming out of movie theater speakers. We're dealing with the sound of analog vs digital recording too.

I went deeper, played the pieces over and over. And I realized that it was like comparing apples and oranges. They were just two completely different approaches to the same piece of music.

I played the ascending flute passage again and again. On the original it comes in around 1:09 and runs 11 seconds to 1:20, on the Silva it comes in at 3:25 and plays to 3:34.

The original plays against a violin (a viola?) making a certain effect (playing at the bridge maybe? I'm not sure just how instruments create certain effects). This tends to put the flutes on an even scale with the viol. The Silva version omits this. The flutes are played against strings and seem more predominant.

Ok, the Silva version isn't exact at this point, but is it the travesty I claimed it to be? The pieces run about the same length although other passages in the piece run faster or slower than their sister versions. The differences are due to editorial decisions, made somewhere along the way by an arranger, conductor, recording engineer, etc. It's not The War Lord as I grew up with it, but it's not not the War Lord at the same time. They're just close but different. Perplexing.

I thought for a second, well, maybe film music really is just the version that is on the original soundtrack of the film and there should be no other version. Maybe, film music doesn't really lend itself to being played like concert music and re-recordings really need to be made in the same way that film scores are recorded for movies: close-mics, overdubs, click-tracks, etc. But that too is ridiculous. I have tons of re-recorded scores that make great playing, made without those disciplines. And imagine having the original acetates of Nevsky as the only version as opposed to the bold stereo recordings of the last 30 years? Or none of the Gerhardt series?

I have music & effects tracks from Gwangi and a 50s recording of The Sharkfighters overture. I compared versions. Again, it was apples and oranges, the versions were close but take different approaches and do different things. I don't know how to judge them at that level. Each version has its own merits but remain un-alike.

So, do I tell the guy who wanted to buy this CD not to buy it? Well, if you're not too familiar with the originals, go ahead. It's only $15 and I'm just one opinion. You might think it's great.

What do I tell all of you? There are enough glaring errors in Silva recordings for me to be justified in my acid towards them. I could make a tape comparing versions of things and you'd hear how off things are. Sometimes they get things nearer the mark than not, but even then, there is some aspect that displeases me. It's not just digital vs analog recording alone as I can point to a number of digital recordings I'm fond of. I don't know what to make of the new Moross until I hear it. In my gut though, even after playing the first Silva Moross, I feel I wouldn't need to worry as much under a different cond/orch/label.

Ford emailed me and told me he honestly believed I was crazy. He said that if I was played a Silva recording and was told it was by McNeely or Marco Polo I would think it great. He obviously hasn't read me slamming those guys too.

I'm not fond of Silva and responses from others on this board seemed to back me up on this, I'm not a lone lunatic, others are unhappy here as well. Maybe it was to teach me a lesson that I posed this challenge. I surprised myself. The Moross turned out to be closer than I thought.

BUT, was it better? Part of the challenge was--which version would you play, prefer to have into the future?--and even with the 60s recording and the dropouts of the aging tape, it was still a no-hands-down decision in favor of the soundtrack version over the Silva. I would not make that decision in every case--there are digital re-records that I'd prefer over the original recordings. But not in this case. It's nice to have both. Sometimes it's not so nice to have a bad new version. Sometimes it's nice to have any version than no version. Even if I can cut them more slack on this CD, I can never forget Bond Back In Action or their War themes album, among others.

I told Ford what a shame I thought it was. Here's Silva recording When Worlds Collide, The Thing, Bridge at Remagen, The Naked and the Dead, On Dangerous Ground, etc., etc. All the right works, the ones I want mostly to hear, but in versions I can't entirely trust.

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Just how badly was the Goldsmith compilation botched (because I plan on purchasing it one day)?

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Well, the Trek suite starts out fine, with a great performance of the Klingon Battle from TMP (even with a lame version of the blaster beam). It starts to break down when the horns come in on Voyager.
They're out of tune. badly out of tune.
HORRRENDOUSLY out of tune.

First Contact is rather poorly performed as well. There is no orchestral balance. The first trumpet player has decided that he wants to be heard over everyone else, and it really is distracting, and dare I say, amateurish. The music naturally lets the trumpet be heard, and he forces his hand.

the rest of the Goldsmith compilation is a sheer delight. Again, this was my first introduction to MANY of the Goldsmith scores heard here. Powder is pretty well done, IMHO. Capricorn One, The Blue Max, The Omen, The Swarm are all exciting to hear.

and I must agree about Great Train Robbery. It's the best track on the entire set.

in the hands of a great orchestra, this would have been an easy 5 star rating. but as it is, I give it 3.5 because the Star Trek is that bad.

If you've paid any attention to these releases they continually get better and better, culminating so far with Zulu.
I don't have Walkabout, Herrmann, Rozsa, or the Kubrick comps yet, but then again, I can't buy everything.

The Horner is really good, as is the Williams. The Rare Breed and Black Sunday are nice to have in lieu of originals.

I think that Silva's heart is in the right place....there are many variables, most of which that we don't know about, as to the quality of their re-recordings.
The orchestra has improved from their first recordings,give them that....
Then again how is it that the Monsterous Movie Music crew can jaunt over to Cracow and get perfect recordings with an orchestra who hasn't been playing this stuff for ten years? Hmmmm....less "Best of War" compilations and more Raise the Titanic's...

NP:THEM!(Kaper) Coincedentally from the fantastic MMM Vol.1 CD

The War compilation is not that good. It appears to have just about the same tracks as Silva's own The Longest Day disc. This was the first Silva compilation I had bought, and I thought it was pretty good at first (until I heard better performances of the same music ) The Macarthur-Patton suite sounds like it was 'performed' by 30 people in a very strange "hokey-pokey" sort of way. Williams' Midway March is another track that was 'performed' quite poorly. The disc also includes some music from In Harm's Way, and that track has plenty of tempo/wrong note problems, too.

Bond: Back in Action sounds good to me, but this is coming from a person who has not heard the original performances of these cues.