The French New Wave Cinema of the 1950s and 1960s, led by directors Truffaut, Goddard, Demy, and Malle, redefined concepts of film by exploring unique aesthetics that often deconstructed expectations of what made an important scene, or by inserting seemingly irrelevant sequences.  Always a unique exploration of people’s personal worlds, the improvisational movie-making approaches created a significant place in the history of cinema for these films.  One important characteristic was a tendency to use jazz-like underscoring.  Performers such as the great Miles Davis provided one notable score for Louis Malle’s Ascension Pour L’Echafaud in 1958 that remains an interesting part of the performer’s recorded legacy.  Composers like Georges Delerue, Antoine Duhamel, and Michel Legrand all contributed to some of the most significant of these projects.

Enter the Stephane Kerecki Quartet.  In Nouvelle Vague, the group pulls together some of the music of the New Wave into an interesting concept album.  The quartet serves as a sort of jazz club ensemble with soprano saxophonist Emile Parisien lending intriguing colors to familiar melodies and with excellent piano support from John Taylor.  Seductive singing by Jeanne Added provides a special flair for Revzani’s song from Pierrot Le Fou (1965) and Legrand’s “La Chanson de Maxence” from Demy’s Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967).

The selections work well to illustrate the jazz connections and explorations of thematic development in these scores.  The Delerue selections may be the more surprising at first for those less familiar with the composer’s earlier work.  The “Suite” from Les Mepris (1963) is certainly one of the highlights of this release.  Hearing Bernard Herrmann’s music for La Mariee etait en noir (1967) in the midst of these other pieces is certainly fascinating. One can still hear the composer’s longing melodic ideas and personal stamp very easily here even in the midst of the improvisational breaks.  The result is an interesting release that remains faithful to the spirit of the original melodies and approaches in these works.  The recorded sound is equally stunning.

While perhaps not for the film music purist, Nouvelle Vagues is certainly an interesting diversion and reminder of the style of a significant moment in film history.  It is available from Out Note Records and features about an hour of music overall.

Falling under the category of corporate synergy, a new Sony Classical release is a reduced-price 2-disc set featuring a variety of music from classic films in honor of TCM’s “Twenty Years of Classic Movies”.  Oddly, but not surprising, none of the material here on the aptly titled Play it Again comes from the original soundtracks but consists of a variety of re-recordings, many from Sony’s 1990s catalogue.  However, some news for fans of the Charles Gerhardt classic film music series is the appearance of several tracks from his 1970s RCA recordings.

Disc one is exclusively performed by Charles Gerhardt and the National Philharmonic Orchestra.  A majority of the disc focuses on the music of Korngold and here is where some of the previously unavailable recordings surface.  First of these is a suite of music from Of Human Bondage (1946).  Gerhardt’s LP release featured just “Nora’s Theme” but here we get a better re-edited version he made shortly before his death.  The suite adds the main title, “Christmas”, “Sally”, a lullaby, and the finale.  Also expanded is music for The Sea Hawk (1940) now a suite some 15 minutes in length.  Gerhardt’s Steiner recordings are also mined for music from Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, and King Kong all appear on disc two.

Otherwise, the second disc features a few more recent recordings, though most are more than 10 years old now themselves.  Esa-Pekka Salonen’s classic Bernard Herrmann release is represented with appropriate classic sequences from Psycho (“The Murder”) and Vertigo (“Scene d’Amour”).  From Maurice Jarre’s 1987 Royal Philharmonic recordings comes music from Dr. Zhivago (“Prelude/Lara’s Theme”) and Lawrence of Arabia (“Overture, Part II”).  Sony’s Morricone album with the Santa Cecilia Orchestra is the source for the “MainTitles” from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.  Elmer Bernstein is represented with his iconic main title (including “Calvera’s Visit”) from a recording with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Finally, the Boston Pops are heard with John Williams conducing “The Dialogue” from Close Encounters and in a 1962 release with Arthur Fiedler of Rozsa’s “Parade of the Charioteers” from Ben-Hur.  The whole collection is finished off with Mancini’s famous “Moon River” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s from his 1961 release—the closest to an “original soundtrack” recording in the entire set.

First off, this is a great set to introduce classic film music to, especially some Korngold.  Some film music fans will want to grab this for the extended Gerhardt releases here.  It is just too bad that Sony could not see fit to provide a 2-disc set conceived in the 21^st century where 70-80 minutes is the expected norm and with such a huge catalogue to mine anyway.  Furthermore, there is not much to get excited about in the meager liner notes.  This is somewhat more bizarre given that the release is supposed to be celebrating something.  What is there is cursory at best.  The conceit here is that this is a bargain 2-for-1 deal, but with little work needing to be done the result feels like a cut and paste job through and through.  All of that said, the selections are well-chosen pieces and at least performance and original recording information is provided here.  It is just too bad that these albums are longer and perhaps really explored the back catalogue of classic recordings a bit more.  That said, the Korngold extended suites may be enough sugar to entice fans to pick this release up.