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.

Conductor David Firman leads this new Royal Philharmonic compilation from their Here Come the Classics series.  Firman has a long history of work in film music going back to the 1990s where he served as a keyboardists on scores such as Basic Instinct, Total Recall, Return of the Jedi and Batman.  For the present release, he has chosen a very interesting and diverse collection of great film music suites along with some lighter tuneful material.

Fans of Charles Gerhardt’s film music classics will recognize several of the suites included here.  Firman uses the same arrangements for Key Largo, The Lost Weekend, Wuthering Heights, and Captains Courageous.  The performances here are equally stellar with “Cathy’s Theme” being a wonderful presentation avoiding some of the cloying sweetness of some performances.  One really feels that Firman is moving through these suites not as a series of disconnected sequences, but as a more unified whole that makes transitions between different moments work very well here.  These more intense suites are balanced with film versions of lighter fare like Jarre’s “Rosy’s Theme” and “Adela’s Theme” from Ryan’s Daughter and A Passage to India respectively as well as Hadjidakas’ classic “Never On a Sunday.”  Roland Shaw’s arrangement of the latter keeps it from being a pops number entirely.  Victor Young’s “Call of the Faraway Hills” is perhaps the only “light” pops sounding track.

The really big surprises that come on this disc is a new recording of music from Rear Window.  This is Christopher Palmer’s five-movement suite that once was available on an old San Diego Pops release conducted by Lalo Schifrin.  The suite receives a fabulous performance here whose jazzier moments have an earlier balance in the selections from Bernstein’s Walk on the Wild Side.  The other “premiere” to disc is a six-movement “suite” from Goldsmith’s Chinatown.  (No arranger is given so this may be a published version by the composer.)  The suite is a series of shorter cues bookended by the main and end titles music.  The piece gives a great flavor for this score in about 8 minutes.  The performances are again superb.

It is somewhat hard to follow what the “theme” of the disc is as there seems to be a blend of Western music with some film noir-like scoring moments and a few popular tunes.  But, that aside, this is one of the best orchestral film compilations to come along in quite a while and is easily the best film music release from the RPO.  Film music recordings that focus on the music as music and not pops fodder are rare and this is one of those times when things come together very well.  One side note is that the recording level is a bit lower which is not a problem for average stereo systems but might make it less of a drive CD (as it has a more classical recording approach).