The year’s best classic film-music albums include works by John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Ennio Morricone and Bernard Herrmann.
Soundtrack labels continued to thrive in 2021, discovering old film scores worth preserving and expanding classics to meet the seemingly insatiable thirst for music written for screens large and small. Limited-edition runs continue to be the primary marketing plan for most – with pressings of anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 copies – and fan favorites like John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann and Ennio Morricone top the list of best-selling, and best-packaged, classic film music released during the past 12 months. Always (on the La-La Land Records label). Steven Spielberg’s 1989 remake of “A Guy Named Joe” (with Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter and John Goodman) is rarely talked about, and John Williams’ score is never showy, always ethereal, dreamlike and quietly supportive. This expanded edition offers several previously unreleased cues. Bandits in Rome (Quartet). This first-ever release of music for the 1968 Italian crime film starring John Cassavetes closes a significant gap in the discography of the great Ennio Morricone (and his frequent collaborator Bruno Nicolai, here credited not only as conductor but also co-composer). Bernard Herrmann: The Film Scores on Phase 4 (Decca). Maybe the film-music release of the year: seven albums that the legendary composer recorded in London between 1968 and 1975. Many of his classics are here in definitive, composer-arranged suites: music for classics (“Citizen Kane”), sci-fi and fantasy (“Fahrenheit 451”), Hitchcock (“Psycho”), De Palma (“Obsession”), plus music by other composers (Shostakovich’s “Hamlet,” Bliss’ “Things to Come”). They’ve never sounded better and each disc is contained in a sleeve that replicates the original artwork and notes. CaboBlanco (La-La Land). A Charles Bronson movie that tried to be “Casablanca,” this 1980 action film also boasted Jason Robards and Dominique Sanda – and a rich, Latin-flavored Jerry Goldsmith score, probably better than this obscure J. Lee Thompson movie deserved. The Diary of Anne Frank (La-La Land). The complete edition of one of Alfred Newman’s finest scores, his Oscar-nominated 1959 music for George Stevens’ moving Holocaust story, released at long last. More than two hours and 20 minutes of music spread over two discs, this late Newman masterwork features exquisite violin solos by Louis Kaufman, perhaps the greatest violinist in Hollywood history. The Eiger Sanction (Intrada). Clint Eastwood’s 1975 mountain-climbing thriller is practically forgotten today, but it’s special for two reasons: it’s probably the most dangerous role Eastwood (who also directed) ever undertook, and it contains one of John Williams’ best scores of the decade. A mix of classical and jazz influences, it merited only a 36-minute LP at the time, but luckily we now have more than two hours of “Eiger” music to savor.
