Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Score Sample: Taras Bulba

It has been a while since I featured a golden age film score on this blog for the Score Sample. Today I'm sharing a track I discovered last year, when I picked up a Charles Gerhardt rerecording compilation featuring the music of Franz Waxman. While the man isn't as well known as many of his contemporaries (such as Herrmann or Steiner) he has crafted some great scores for well known films including Sunset Boulevard, Philadelphia Story and Bride of Frankenstein. He even worked with Alfred Hitchcock on a couple of occasions for music used in Rear Window and Rebecca

Today I'm focusing on his work on the 1962 film Taras Bulba featuring Yul Brynner and Tony Curtis. Bernard Herrmann called the score one of the best ever written, and if you know Herrmann... well that is saying something. One of the highlights of the score is the track The Ride to Dubno. It is one of the most bombastic and energetic tracks of the era, and certainly a challenge to perform. In 2011 the city of Prague Philharmonic accepted the challenge and rerecorded the entire score for Tadlow records. Enjoy this amazing track and the talented musicians performing it.


5 comments:

  1. The score is great as is the huge cast in costume charging around on horseback, the sort of spectacle that no seems able top afford anymore even in a day when production costs in 9 figures don't shock us. Too bad there isn't a better movie to go along with all that.

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    1. Yeah, once "Lord of the Rings" pretty much made huge armies of digital warriors look really damn good... well there's no need to hire hundreds of extras and deal with all the problems that hundreds of horses would pose. I heard the movie wasn't so hot, but damn the cues I've heard from the score are amazing.

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  2. Not familiar with that one, but ran across this link lately, which you might like to peruse. http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/daily/index.cfm

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    1. Thanks for the link. Film Score Monthly is a neat resource. I can usually be found on the FilmTracks forum posting my "Now Playing" threads and bantering with the fans, fanatics and crazies over there.

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