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The content list seems impressive, but actually the selections are mundane and uninspired. There is lots of dissonance and the quality of the recordings is mixed. Seems so unlike Erich Kunzel, or Telarc for that matter.
Great scores, brings the images of the movies back to my mind, I loved it.
They were released before the age of the crappy Silva compilations. There's the standard film lover's tracks too. We get the best sounding re-recordings of "Lara's Theme" from Dr Zhivago and an interesting concert arrangement of "Lawrence of Arabia". One of the few chick flicks that I can actually sit through and almost shed a tear. The production values on these CDs were big, bold, and full of ear pleasing sound even on some of the lesser quality themes. Most recently for me, the most stand-out tracks here are the popular Maurice Jarre works (who passed the week before I'm writing this review). I watched a ton of movies growing up through middle & highschool, so these Kunzel/Cincinnati Pops CDs were like gold for me. My personal gem beyond the Jarre tracks are Michael Gore's wonderful piano score for Terms of Endearment.
They present the music with a huge symphonic range of sound that is very professional and dead on. Rocky, Ben Hur, Exodus, Love Story, A Summer Place, the continuously misused Jaws theme, and John Barry's lovely Out of Africa. For fans of the music it's great to listen to somebody else's interpretation of the scores, but we'd all much rather have the original recordings. We get Chariots of Fire which sounds interesting and a bit bolder performed by a full orchestra rather than the original Vangelis synths. Telarc was, at the time, THE standard for early digital audio and it shows. Gore's theme is lovely and very hummable after the first listen.
These are beautiful samplings of Jarre's works and make a fascinating unintentional tribute to the composer.For the most part however, this CD offers up standard fare. We also get rather uninspired pops-style performance of Goldfinger that sounds like its performed by a highschool football band, complete with overly done percussion. For film music noobs, Kunzel's compilations are a must. That is if we can afford them all in today's tough times.
I am very happy with my cd and it was sent right away and in great condition
For those that purchase soundtrack collages to have a variety of songs and themes, then this is good for you. Unfortunately, these tracks didn't have the signature Erich Kunzel version of the songs as he had on other soundtrack mix CDs. It was more like just that, a mix CD of different soundtracks and scores. However, it was a good buy in the fact that the tracks chosen had excellent sound quality and a sense of harmony.
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