The Hunt for Red October - Expanded

Composer Basil Poledouris was a natural choice to provide the musical accompaniment for Jack Ryan's memorable first film adventure, The Hunt for Red October. Not only had much of the film been tracked with his music, but the film's story combined elements that recurred in many of the composer's projects, including U.S.–Soviet relations, men and machines, and the ocean.

For the opening titles, Poledouris invented his own "Russian folk" song, one from which the thematic material for the rest of the score is drawn. Although much of Poledouris' score consists of short, subdued cues, which mix orchestra and electronics, a few stand-out sequences gave Poledouris the opportunity to bring his full orchestral and choral forces to bear—depicting underwater navigation with a musical sense of wonder, adapting the choral material with a more menacing quality and a lengthy, pivotal sequence in which a nuclear accident is faked.

Basil Poledouris and his team put considerable creative effort into the original mixes. Many cues were mixed not just once but two or three times, getting the balances between orchestra, chorus and electronics exactly right, adding electronic "sweeteners," and in some cases subtly altering the musical timings to fit revised film footage. The score truly exists in these master mixes, which have been newly transferred and mastered from 1/4" two-track tapes in the Paramount vaults for this release of the expanded score. For this expanded edition, Intrada presents these mixes and nearly doubles the length of the previous MCA release.