Although officially titled
Captain Blood on its spine, this CD offers a lot more than just that
Erich Wolfgang Korngold score (which takes up just under 20 minutes here). Indeed, one of the unexpected delights comes during the opening with the presentation of
Miklós Rózsa's mostly overlooked and unknown score for The King's Thief (1955), an adventure film set during the reign of Charles II, which is one of the most unabashedly rousing pieces of music ever to come from the composer, with rich horn and brass parts ornamenting the entire seven-and-a-half-minute suite.
Victor Young's music from Scaramouche, which follows, is a bit more romantic in character, with long, lush violin parts to carry much of its length. Then comes
Korngold's score, a breakthrough work for the composer that, in one fell swoop, established him at Warner Bros. and in Hollywood after a lifetime spent in the opera houses and concert halls of Vienna -- opening with a bold drum roll and a fanfare on the brass, horns, and strings which, once heard, is never forgotten, the music distilled down the essence of the heroic plot line in seemingly effortless fashion, and makes for 19 delightful minutes of listening here. And
Max Steiner's music for The Three Musketeers (1935) closes this CD with a nearly 19-minute suite, which contains some of the finer adventure scoring of its era by the man who practically invented the technique of scoring the sound film -- if
Steiner lacks
Korngold's refinement and inventiveness, he makes up for it with a panache born of the opera house and the operetta stage, and a boldness in orchestration that surprised and delighted filmgoers in 1935 and still pleases the ear today.
The Brandenburg Philharmonic, based in Potsdam, plays beautifully throughout, and conductor
Richard Kaufman captures the essential nuances of the diverse composers represented here, and the annotation is reasonably thorough as well. ~ Bruce Eder