Kritzerland is proud to present its newest limited edition CD – two rare original television soundtracks from Bernard Herrmann.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Produced in 1954, and originally aired on December 23rd of that year, A Christmas Carol was a CBS Shower of Stars TV special, adapted from the classic Dickens tale by Maxwell Anderson, who also provided lyrics for the songs. The show starred Fredric March as Scrooge, and Basil Rathbone as Marley. The music was, of course, by the great Bernard Herrmann. The show was well reviewed, and received two repeats during the Christmas season in 1955 and 1956. Herrmann created a wonderful score (Variety called it “majestic”) and his songs are quite delightful, with infectious melodies. Mr. Herrmann received his only Emmy nomination for this score. The nine tracks feature underscore, some dialogue, and the songs – in addition to the soloists, the choral work is performed by The Roger Wagner Chorale. Mr. Herrmann conducts the forty-piece orchestra.

A CHILD IS BORN

A Child Is Born was written in 1955 for The General Electric Theater, hosted by Ronald Reagan. Bernard Herrmann adapted it from the blank-verse play by Stephen Vincent Benet. The show featured Metropolitan Opera stars Nadine Conner and Theodor Uppman, along with the wonderful character actor, Victor Jory, and, once again, the Roger Wagner Chorale. The show was broadcast live on December 25th (one week after the first repeat of A Christmas Carol), but the show was not well received and it would have only one repeat broadcast the following year. Even though it was not the success that A Christmas Carol was, A Child Is Born still has beautiful sung passages, and typically great Herrmannesque underscore.

Mastered from the best available sources, there are a few sound anomalies, but every effort has been made to minimize them. The CD runs fifty-four minutes. Given the archival nature of the release and because it’s our Christmas release, we are offering these two rare scores at a special price of $15.98 (plus shipping).

This release is limited to 1000 copies only.

CDs will ship in early December – preorders usually ship one to two weeks earlier.

To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com

No, you would be very incorrect - these were not mastered from the bootleg LPs. The booklet has the complete story of how these were done. Obviously there are no master tapes on these scores - A Child Is Born was mastered from two pristine copies of the 10 inch promotional LP, and A Christmas Carol has a very interesting story which is gone into detail in the booklet - the Reader's Digest version is that in the mid-1970s I came into possession of what were then (and now) the only known acetates on this show. I made a 15ips tape copy of those acetates back then, and that is what was used for this transfer. FYI, the bootleg LP was made from a ratty cassette, about a fifth generation off my acetates. I'd given a cassette to someone as a gift, and as you might imagine, a few copies were made by that individual for others - but I purposely used a low-quality cassette with no Dolby so that it couldn't be bootlegged, but that's never stopped these people before. Anyway, these sound as good as they're ever going to sound - my mastering guy did a masterful job.

A Child is Born has shown up on boot before as well but since there was a rare 10 inch promo disc, anyone could be the source for that one.

That said, the sound quality was as good as could be expected from acetates and 50s vinyl transfers. The music however is still as excellent as when Herrmann composed it in the mid-1950s. Both are great scores. Herrmann showed with A Christmas Carol that he could set lyrics to song if need be with very simple and catchy melodies and minimalist backgrounds. A Child is Born is really is an opera whereas A Christmas Carol is a musical. A Christmas Carol has a lot of charming and upbeat music that only dips once or twice into Herrmann's moody clarinets or a very spooky choir section. A Child is Born, whose book is dominated by Victor Jory's shaky, pleading, voice, is a much more serious and dramatic piece and receives music in kind.

I'm glad these have found there way onto CD because they deserve to be available to Herrmann lovers. However, as a limited edition of 1000 copies, I presume they won't be available all that long.

I'm very much is agreement with Mr. Rugger who said collecting had become a drag because he didn't have the disposable income to keep chasing after every new limited release.

I see both sides of this. I understand that the record companies have to put up money in advance to get the music, write and print the notes, and press the CDs, and if they make 5 or 10,000 of these, they'll just sit around selling regularly but slowly for years. They want their money now, especially if they need it to make more discs.

However, building scarcity into the product to create a need to buy now or else only assists those fans who have a lot of disposable income and can buy discs they want month after month. It's never been a greater time for film music, everything is coming out. If only things were like this 30 years ago we could have saved a lot more music. But it's only a great time for people with cash to burn. If you've kissed your savings account and your retirement goodbye already so you can buy the Herrmann scores you want, losing out on things like the FSM 10-disc MGM set with The 7th Dawn and Billion Dollar Brain because you haven't got $129 free and handy can be very disheartening.

Since I'm a fan and not a businessman, I'm for me and not what's in the best interests of the suppliers. They may stay afloat by these practices and claim if they didn't do it no one would get the music but that doesn't alter the fact that collecting has become a rich man's game and accessibility has become difficult.

If some youngster likes film music and gets into it, good luck trying to buy all the here & gone limited editions that would keep you hooked since they are all now out of print. The whole point about getting some great score out of the vaults and into the public's hands is to get it into the public's hands. Instead it goes into 1,000 rich hands and disappears again. Some film music renaissance this turns out to be.