While I am still enjoying Film Score Monthly's superb box set of scores for the Superman films, out comes a couple of new releases, one sure to cause fans to get excited.

The first of these is Gary McFarland's score for Eye of the Devil.  McFarland was a jazz composer and wrote 2 film scores before his untimely death at the age of 38.  So this will be of particular interest to those who know of his work in jazz, or fans of jazz-related scores. 

But perhaps the biggest news is FSM's release of Elmer Bernstein's score to the bizarre animated classic, Heavy Metal.  This is probably one of Bernstein's most requested later scores and surely one of his finest from the 1980s.  It makes one wonder how many more late 1970s and early 1980s scores are now possible to release from this and other labels.

A word on the Superman box....It might seem a bit much at first to pay when you already own the original album re-issue, or Rhino's set from a few years ago, but it is well worth it.  Superman is beautifully restored with greater detail than was available before and makes for a very coherent listen.  Ken Thorne's work on Superman II will feel more like a curiosity at first with its reuse of material from the first film, but it is in his music for Superman III where we get to hear his ability as more than just a glorified arranger and it turns out to be a pleasant surprise.  The new themes for Superman IV are classic Williams and the booklet outlines whose music we are hearing.  Themes are given album treatments and these, especially "Jeremy's Theme" is classic Williams style scoring.  In fact Courage's score is a wonderful blend of delicious 1960s-like soft pop/jazz and intriguingly scored big orchestral numbers.  The harmonic language here is worth the price of the discs alone.  A score we have not been able to hear for far too long, thankfully given a deluxe treatment. 

Still more to listen to, but give up a few Starbuck's coffees and treat yourself to some great music.

I do not as a rule do concert reviews because, well, what's to gain from them if you were not there.  But in a slow film music week I figured, what the heck.

We went to the Pops here last night for what was, I think, one of the best concerts I have seen there.  Steven Mercurio led the Pops through an astonishingly difficult series of great pieces.  Dancing around on the podium, Mercurio often looked like he was conducting a metal band.  But his energy was infectious and the orchestra seemed to become as energized as he was.

The first third of the program featured a fantastic perfomance of music from Korngold's The Adventures of Robin Hood.  There was one sneaky early trumpet entry, but otherwise the performance was as perfect as you can get.  The string section could have been doubled for this to have worked really well, but this was fabulous music making.  We then were treated to the brief suite of music from Waxman's score for A Place in the Sun.  I was struck again how Waxman mixes amazing tone clusters of sound going from almost atonal lines to lush romantic themes.  Again, a fabulous performance.  The brass had just enough in them to play through Rozsa's "Parade of the Charioteers."  This was the most vigourous and crisp performance I've heard in some time.

The second third featured music by Leonard Bernstein from West Side Story.  There were a sequence of songs first which were fine.  But the real highlight of the concert was the set of symphonic dances which followed.  Wow!!!  This was the best performance I have heard of this suite with unbelievable orchestral precision, crisp articulation, fantastic rhythmic drive, and musically shaped beyond what one could hope.  It was a performance you could hope was being recorded for posterity--it was that good.  And it made you realize that the Pops is a world class orchestra when it wants to be.

The final portion of the program featured music mostly by Richard Rodgers.  "Shall We Dance?" kicked off the segment followed by selections from Loewe's My Fair Lady.  Here the 2 vocal soloists really shined and performed the 2 key numbers quite well.  The final set was Richard Rodney Bennet's arrangement of selections from The Sound of Music.  It was kind of interesting to hear this finely orchestrated piece, now itself over 30 years old.  As an encore, Mercurio performed an arrangement (his own) of the love theme from Morricone's "Cinema Paradiso."  It was a gorgeously shaped performance to see the least.

Sitting through this concert made one hope that there is a Golden Age film score release in the Pops' near future.  They definitely have the chops for it and Mercurio needs to get a shot at some Bernstein on disc.

What we thought would be a humdrum night after our earlier John Williams concerts turned out to be the best concert of the season.  We hope Mercurio returns soon!!