Heroes of Telemark / Stagecoach

Intrada's latest release from the Mainstream catalog features two entire albums that were originally released on vinyl in the mid-60s. Stagecoach makes its first appearance on CD from the first-generation multi-channel album masters and The Heroes of Telemark makes its world premiere release on CD.

Malcolm Arnold's main theme for The Heroes of Telemark is characteristically broad and exuberant. Part fanfare and part processional, the theme presses forward with a majestic sweep. It is the score's keystone, appearing in settings both grandiose and subdued, shifting from major to minor when appropriate, and surfacing in various guises within the pulse-pounding action and suspense sequences. The score was recorded at Cine-Tele Sound Studios in London under Arnold's baton and featured a pinched audio quality. The stereo imaging is minimal and the recording was originally locked down with an abundance of reverb, giving the overall album a very "wet" sound with limited clarity. Intrada located both the original stereo and mono album masters and determined the same audio limitations existed on the mono masters, though without the benefit of any stereo separation at all, so Intrada elected to use the stereo master.

Moving from WWII Europe to the old west, Stagecoach was a remake of the famous John Wayne western. Jerry Goldsmith provided a score with more subtlety and depth than the usual genre fare. Goldsmith avoids spending much time on action scenes, which are largely unscored and does not squander his time on a plethora of themes or motifs for the overflowing cast. Instead, he delivers a spare and spirited score of unexpected beauty. The featured musical colors are harmonica, mouth harp, guitar and accordion, evoking the intimacy of a lonely campfire while pulling against the scale of the screen and the bumpy ride in store for its occupants.

For the album re-recording session, Jerry Goldsmith newly recorded virtually every sequence from his brief film score save the closing bars of the final song, "Stagecoach To Cheyenne" by Lee Pockriss and Paul Vance, sung in the picture by Wayne Newton but on the album by The Bill Brown Singers. All previous CD releases were drawn either from vinyl or from 2-track mixes that omitted much of the orchestral detail in the score. Even the original LP was prepared from watered-down mixes. With this CD release of the score, every orchestral detail is at last available, newly mixed from the 1" masters made at the recording sessions in January 1966.