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Most of the music is (fortunately) performed by good orchestras in good recording facilities.
But in between, there are a few cuts performed by the City of Prague.
Without even looking at the inlays, you immediately know when the City of P starts playing. Before and after the City of P, the orchestras play perfectly. The music flows and is a pleasure to listen to.
The moment the City of P kicks in, the music becomes almost deformed, with no continuity, no fluidity... it's as if they had taken a bunch of soloists and put them in an orchestra to play together with no rehearsals. The brass players don't seem to know what the strings are doing, and within the brass section the players don't seem to follow their colleagues. It's as if no one followed the conductor, and everyone played whichever way they saw fit. And this pretty much happens most of the time, regardless of who the conductor is.

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I don't remember all this in detail; my overall impression was that the set is very inspired. Regarding Prague, their work is sucky when it comes to re-recording scores written by others. When they actually perform original scores, as would be the case here as all of these are new scores for old films, Prague Orch is actually decent.

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Originally posted by PeterK:
Regarding Prague, their work is sucky when it comes to re-recording scores written by others.

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"They were never sucky... they were just trying to find and understand film music"?

LOL, um...

Sucky: trying to do something but not very good at it, as if trying to do something without understanding it (ie, not knowing how to do it). Sucky. S.u.c.k.y.

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Originally posted by PeterK:
Sucky: trying to do something but not very good at it, as if trying to do something without understanding it (ie, not knowing how to do it). Sucky. S.u.c.k.y.

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Thor, YOUR WORDS: "they were still trying to find and understand film music." This can only imply one thing: they didn't get it, and the results are proof of this.

Ben-Hur was the first score I ran across by Carl Davis. I caught the last 10 mins of the movie on PBS one night and I was already hooked on the score. And then I was blown away by the action cues I heard earlier in the score when I finally heard the album.

The Phantom of the Opera, I bought after trying to figure out what else Davis could do if he could do stuff like Ben-Hur.
And I was equally impressed. Its has a really good love theme, and an interesting motif for the Phantom. Its very gothic sounding with a huge organ in some parts. Its good stuff.

The third score is Napoleon, alot of people dismissed this score for all its references to Beethoven. But thats wrong, because Davis' intentions were legit and the use of it was very appropriate. He's scoring a movie about Napoleon whoes favorite composer was Beethoven! Who by the way was very popular at that the time of Napoleon's life.
Basically this is an action/adventure score with a big heroic main theme. Its very ecxiting stuff.

Another score thats worth mentioning is Intolerance which is not included on that compliation sadly. The movie took place in different time periods, Biblical, Medevil, and Modern time (1914), and the score reflects each time period, but sharing a common theme.

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Originally posted by PeterK:
It's weird being in a discussion where Thor uses me to disagree with himself. Um.

Thor, YOUR WORDS: "they were still trying to find and understand film music." This can only imply one thing: they didn't get it, and the results are proof of this.

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No, I'm only disagreeing with you, Peter. While they may not have properly grasped all the peculiarities of film music when they started their "Silva Streak", they were nonetheless a wonderful orchestra with top-notch musicians that made some decent performances.

What's so hard to understand about that? I'm NOT saying that they were "sucky" and now they are good. I'm saying they were DECENT and now they're very good (because they've grasped those very peculiarities after one and a half decade of film score recordings).

When I say sucky, I mean exactly what you are saying all this time with your "while they may not have properly grasped all the peculiarities of film music" arguments. I even said they are decent when it comes to playing original scores.

We AGREE Thor, we AGREE. Don't get it? Then forget about it.

Look. When the Prague guys practice, they are good. When they record a whole Silva album in an afternoon, they suck. On one hand, you can blame Silva for the bad recordings because they have little interest in perfect (or even good) recordings much of the time, so there's no point in them paying the Czechs for "practice time." Why not is beyond me, as the orchestra is super cheap to begin with!

If Carl Davis had the Chicago Symphony record his scores, this album would be a best seller for several reasons: the performance would be unparalleled (Czech's performances are unparalleled, but that's in a whole different universe), people who know the Chicago Symphony know it is one of the best in the world... and buying a CSO product is money well spent, the CSO would likely do live concerts and market the CDs like la Hollywood Bowl does theirs. In a word, it would be grand.

I think the Prague CD's are at least as good as a lot of the Cincinatti Pops CD's.

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Originally posted by PeterD:
I bought this one mainly for the almost 14-minute "Chariot Race" track from BEN-HUR -- thunderous, rousing stuff.

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Originally posted by tjguitar:
My biggest complaint with Silva is how they constantly recycle tracks (but of course they tend to leave off a track or two and make me go seek out an out of print release!) haha.

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No kidding about that. Silva is run by evildoers. One the one side, the compilations they constantly dump into the market are not for collectors... on the flipside, they make a point to include some random obscurity that non-collectors would know nothing about... the move is aimed right at the collector! Argh, sour saliva.

In either case, let's just say that I think the Prague orchestra is a great one, and today it is far better on film music than more renowned(sp.?) orchestras around the world that are NOT so used to film music. Is there some sloppy stuff now and then? Sure, but for the most part I think they sound great.

As for the endless Silva compilations, I never buy them. But they're not for me either. They're for the casual listener or people wanting to check out film music in the first place. I don't think we should fault them for that.

Guess we just have to agree to disagree on their merits.

After all this discussion, you're going to admit you don't even buy them?

Ok, sure! I'll say things don't suck if I've never heard them either. How can they suck?

:::shudders:::

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Originally posted by PeterK:
Thor, what the ****?????

After all this discussion, you're going to admit you don't even buy them?

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Not anymore, no. I used to when I was getting into film music some 18 years ago (wow, has it been that long!?), but now I pretty much own most of the stuff that is on those compilations, so there's no need for me to get them.

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Originally posted by tjguitar:
I think the Prague CD's are at least as good as a lot of the Cincinatti Pops CD's.

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Hardly.

Listen more closely. Assuming both the Ohio and Prague bands get the notes equally right, the differences are elsewhere.
The first difference is in the rythms. The Prague band misses entries and exits. Instruments in too early, others overstay. There are a number of synchronization problems between sections. Part of that is conductor. Part of it could be the pathetic Smecky shoe box. Part of it could be editing. Much of it is the orchestra. We used to sound like that in music class at the first rehearsals. It seems like a case of musicians under-rehearsing and reading the music as they go along, but not being all that good at it.
You'll find few if any of the same rythmic problems in Ohio.

The second problem is in the tone. You can get the notes right and still sound like a drone. That's what differentiates the truly great from the good. I'm sure the Prague band could nail a Tchaikovsky symphony from the first attempt. I'm also sure that after a decade of rehearsals they'll still never produce the gorgeous tonalities found in the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra or New York Philharmonic (to name but only a miniscule three of the world's greatest).

Let me put it this way: three weeks ago I dumped a bunch of classical albums on a compilation. As it happens, two versions of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez were loaded back to back.

Carlos Bonnell's recording with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal under Charles Dutoit is exemplary. The Montreal band displays a lucid, sumptous and lush, crystaline, confident but edge-of-your-seat, and ultra-competent sound. They're a marvel to listen to. It's simply put one of the best recordings of Rodrigo's masterpiece. Recommended to anyone.

As fantastic as that was, the recording was over, and the second performance began. Suddenly, it was a completely different universe. No matter how good the Montreal orchestra was, from the very first second the winds and strings of the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy entered the picture, it was sonic heaven. The aboslute most gorgeous tones you can possibly imagine from an orchestra. It's nothing less than pure sonic bliss. Of course they don't call them the Fantastic Philadelphians for nothing. But the point still stands: two orchestras can get the notes right. The true difference is in the tone. No matter how good the Montreal Symphony was, they were outclassed by the Philadelphians on every single point (including rythmic accuracy and coordination between musicians).

Which is a shame. It's with unintended irony that someone remarked above that the City of Prague performs well on original film score recordings, but not on re-recordings.

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Originally posted by franz_conrad:
Thor, this is not a board friendly to those who have time for the City of Prague. While there are still occasionally unfortunate interpretations of familiar works (e.g. the recent reading of the end credits from MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA), for the most part I think people are overly fussy on this.

Which is a shame. It's with unintended irony that someone remarked above that the City of Prague performs well on original film score recordings, but not on re-recordings.

For one, I think their Jarre and Herrmann Essential Collections are actually really strong compilations - great introductions to either composer at good prices.

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Ditto their Steiner, Tiomkin, Bernstein and Rozsa! (Boo on their Horner though.)

Look. I am harsh on Prague because Prague was the first orchestra I ever heard (beyond the NWO) that really butchered stuff, and since then I've heard countless other hog squeals. However, Silva has released more than countless compilations... it should be understood that I have never implied Prague is horrible 100% of the time. I am the one who said they do great work on OSTs (on average better than they do on the re-records), and the irony was meant. It illustrates the level of expertise going on in Prague's Smecky. Which is my entire freaking point.

Actually, my first point was that this Carl Davis 2CD set is very good. I like it.

I think as the Prague has done more film music recordings they've become a bit better at them. But I don't think the culpret is as much the orchestra as the poor conductors, arrangements, and producing the Prague had to work with on Silva recordings.

The Prague recorded the scores to Madison & The Ninth Gate and they don't sound bad there. But on Silva records, they seem up against the fates.

I haven't heard enough of their playing away from Silva to agree with Thor one way or the other that they are a great orchestra. Like Peter K, my associations with them are all connected to bad, un-spirited performances.

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Originally posted by franz_conrad:
Thor, this is not a board friendly to those who have time for the City of Prague.

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Yes, I've gathered as much.

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Originally posted by PeterK:
Yep, and Portman's Oliver Twist too... it doesn't even sound like Prague!

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Originally posted by Thor:
Yes, I've gathered as much.

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Can you blame people for having high standards?

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Originally posted by Dinko:
you'll hear subtle nuances which are lacking from Oliver Twist where the tone is rougher and more angular than Portman's usual sound.

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Originally posted by PeterK:
The London Portman must be too frou-frou for me!

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Spoken by an avid Delerue fan...