Silva Screen Records missed the usual Valentine's Day release target for this sort of album by a couple of months, but maybe the label was aiming for Prom Night instead. Or perhaps it doesn't matter when you put out an album of romantic music, since love can spring up at any time. Silva Screen specializes in re-creations of film music generally performed, as 29 out of 30 tracks here are, by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra (the exception being Tony Lee's solo piano version of
Erroll Garner's 1954 jazz standard "Misty," included on the grounds of its use in 1971's Play Misty for Me). But you won't see the orchestra credited on the cover. The star here is the music, and the emphasis on movie titles arranged into five themes -- "The Golden Age of Hollywood Romance," "Piano Love Themes," "The
Jane Austen Romances," "European Romantic Cinema," and "Contemporary Hollywood Romances" -- warns the listener of the nearly generic nature of the performances. From the start, with
Max Steiner's "Tara's Theme" from Gone With the Wind, the orchestra is turning in competent but unexceptional readings of the many familiar pieces. Anyone who has seen Gone With the Wind (and who hasn't?) recalls the power of that theme, particularly in the moments just before the intermission, but this orchestra lacks the forcefulness of the M-G-M studio orchestra that played it, or perhaps conductor
Nic Raine's arrangement and orchestration just don't go for the gusto.
Raine,
Paul Bateman,
Kenneth Alwyn, and
James Fitzpatrick, who alternate at the conductor's podium, seem to have been concerned with getting professional work from the orchestra, but not a distinct sense of interpretation. Maybe that makes for an album that will play well as background music in a romantic setting for movie lovers who know their scores and theme songs, from Casablanca to Titanic. But it also means that these stirring themes have been reduced to anonymous easy listening music for the most part. ~ William Ruhlmann