Five Sax is a group of international saxophone players who formed back in 2011.  The present disc features their own arrangements of a variety of film music.  Obviously not necessarily for purists, the album does feature some great virtuosic performances covering a blend of familiar and less familiar fare.

The album opens with an interesting idea: a series of themes from classic pirate films from Korngold to Badelt/Zimmer.  The arrangement itself is overall quite good.  The music from Hook and the Korngold (with beautifully-shaped thematic playing here!) seems to fit best for the sound of the group, the punch of the more recent Pirates of the Caribbean adds some nice contrast rhythmically.  Personally, it might have been better placed at the end of the album to help orient the audience better to the overall sound of this music and with the somewhat exciting finale working well with added percussion.

That said, the inclusion of music by Leroy Shields (1893-1962) will be the greatest find here.  Shields provided music for the Laurel and Hardy films and the ensemble has put together a little “suite” of sorts featuring five incidental pieces from these films (including the signature “Cuckoo” and delightful “Little Dancing Girl”).  The performances here are simply wonderful capturing the spirit of this music and the period quite wonderfully.  The theme from Rota’s score for 81/2 follows (this would have been a great opening track) and is another great highlight of this carnival like atmosphere.

Next up are three more lyrical choices.  “Gabriel’s Oboe” from The Mission may seem like a bold choice but demonstrates the expressive qualities of the soprano sax.  “Playing Love” (The Legend of 1900) is perhaps one of Morricone’s most masterful underscoring moments and this is an equally touching arrangement which also features pianist Jacek Obstarczyk.  “Married Life” from Up then seems like a very natural choice to flow out of these two pieces and is simply perfect.

The CD then takes a bit of a left turn musically with a suite from Psycho!  The opening is less harsh, but the knife sequence is perhaps not quite as successful.  What is interesting is that one can hear some of the jazz-like rhythmic ideas of Herrmann’s score more clearly in this setting.  We get to recover a bit with a cover of “Hedwig’s Theme” (with some added percussion aiding the colors) and then an interesting suite of music from Shore’s The Lord of the Rings scores.  The latter is interesting but percussion ideas, while trying to get at the flavor of the music, do not work always as well.  Jazzier and rock influences provide musical contrast for Bono’s theme from Goldeneye, which works well.  Finally, we are in firm jazz territory with selections from Henry Mancini’s The Pink Panther whose original sax solo is among the classic film themes for the instrument.  Here the added percussion and performance is simply spot on!  Three additional musical sequences follow from the 1964 film (“The Village Inn”, “Royal Blue”, and “It Had Better Be Tonight”) and are all excellently chosen for this ensemble.

Five Sax have put together a really fun album of film music that explores the wide range of their ensemble of saxes.  The choices are performed with a great sense of the music’s original sound often with a real attention to detail and energy that draw you in rather quickly.  Some sequencing aside, the album plays quite well with listeners sure to find something that stands out to them along the way.  At the Movies is thus a fairly successful compilation of film music arrangements with fabulous performances on this wonderful Orlando Records release.

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.