Some of the 20th century's greatest music can be found in the film scores of Hollywood's golden age. For 20 years, Turner Classic Movies Network has been keeping this great music alive with their presentations of classic films for movie lovers of all ages. To mark the anniversary, Sony Masterworks and TCM have joined forces to present a new 2-CD collection of iconic movie themes and highlights from the very best film scores, including music by Bernard Herrmann, Max Steiner, Maurice Jarre, Elmer Bernstein, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Henry Mancini, Ennio Morricone and John Williams. Play It Again – The Classic Sound of Hollywood is available April 1 from Sony Masterworks.
"We, at Turner Classic Movies, believe in bringing movie lovers closer to the movies they love, and Play It Again – The Classic Sound of Hollywood is a great way to do that," said Dennis Adamovich, senior vice president of digital, affiliate, lifestyle and commerce enterprise for TCM, TNT and TBS. "The carefully curated selections on the 2-CD compilation not only evoke vivid memories of the films for which they were written, but also stand apart from those films as magnificent compositions. As TCM celebrates its 20th anniversary, we are proud to be working with Sony Masterworks on this extraordinary collection."
The first disc restores long-unavailable recordings made for the acclaimed Classic Film Scores series, recorded for RCA Red Seal in the early 1970s by conductor Charles Gerhardt and London's National Philharmonic Orchestra. It includes two grand suites from scores by Erich Wolfgang Korngold—Of Human Bondage and The Sea Hawk, both re-edited by Gerhardt—that have been unavailable for decades. These sweeping works make clear what lovers of classic film scores have always known: Not only is movie music essential to Hollywood's classic films, the best of it can also stand on its own. The disc also features music from Salome, Peyton Place and The Thing (from Another World).
The second disc samples definitive moments from the greatest of all movie scores, from Casablanca to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and from Gone with the Wind to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. The savage drama of Steiner's King Kong, one of the first profound movie scores, is here, but so is the cool, wistful longing of Mancini's "Moon River" from the title sequence of Breakfast at Tiffany's. Rounding out the disc are selections from Lawrence of Arabia, Ben-Hur, Vertigo, and many more iconic films.