Screen

Finally, a serious collectible from Decca in the form of SHOSTAKOVICH: THE FILM ALBUM, in which Riccardo Chailly and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra give immaculate accounts of some of the lugubrious master's cheerier products. The later works suffer from Shostakovich's over-declamatory tendency, but the early ones — The Counterplan and Alone— are extraordinarily beguiling.

Meanwhile the main soundtrack mills turn busily. From Silva Screen comes the perfectly timed DR STRANCELOVE: MUSIC FROM THE FILMS OF STANLEY KUBRICK; Naxos has released the equally topical CINEMA CLASSICS 1999, with 'classical music made famous' in everything from Hilary and Jackie to Life is Beautiful'and The Thin Red Line.

Naxos has released the equally topical CINEMA CLASSICS 1999, with 'classical music made famous' in everything from Hilary and Jackie to Life is Beautiful'and The Thin Red Line. And not content with releasing the soundtrack to the last-named film, RCA now offers MELANESIAN CHOIRS: CHANTS FROM THE THIN RED LINE.

Carlos Saura's TANCO, in which life and art are inextricably intertwined, is a comparable disappointment. Putting the camera in Vittorio Storaro's hands was of course a guarantee of overall handsomeness — who else could pan for two minutes over a cluster of empty chairs and still hold you riveted? - and the dance sequences are a delight.

What are we to make of Francois Girard's THE RED VIOLIN? Will it repeat the success of his celebrated 32 Short Films About Glenn Gouldl Frankly I doubt it, though it's just as much an extended jeu d'esprit.

A miraculous violin, a pack of tarot cards, a couple of talented tots, a mane-tossing Paganini-figure, and an endlessly repeated auction: this awkward blend of realism and whimsy jumps back and forth through the centuries until one longs for terra firma - indeed, the most solid thing in the film is Joshua Bell playing John Corigliano's score off-screen.

‘No film is complete without music’ said Bernard Herrmann, the grandfather of film music and its unsurpassed exponent. But there are times when I would like to stand that statement on its head: film music is more a bane than a blessing. For this, we shouldn’t blame any particular composer but rather the conventions which now govern the craft.

‘No film is complete without music’ said Bernard Herrmann, the grandfather of film music and its unsurpassed exponent. But there are times when I would like to stand that statement on its head: film music is more a bane than a blessing. For this, we shouldn’t blame any particular composer but rather the conventions which now govern the craft.

‘No film is complete without music’ said Bernard Herrmann, the grandfather of film music and its unsurpassed exponent. But there are times when I would like to stand that statement on its head: film music is more a bane than a blessing. For this, we shouldn’t blame any particular composer but rather the conventions which now govern the craft. Every film which aspires to tug at the heartstrings – and also send the audience out feeling jaunty – will have a soundtrack alternating between violin syrup and cabaret-band spice.

‘There’s nothing to see except this girl (Audrey Hepburn) walking around eating a croissant out of a paper bag’, wrote Henry Mancini of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. ‘What it needed was a melody, something for the ears to follow while the eyes weren’t too busy.’ So that’s what he wrote – and the theme music for the film is just one of 46 delectable tracks on RCA Victor’s double lollipop. You think you don’t know the Pink Panther theme? Of course you do! Just listen to the saxophone swing on the opening track.

‘No film is complete without music’ said Bernard Herrmann, the grandfather of film music and its unsurpassed exponent. But there are times when I would like to stand that statement on its head: film music is more a bane than a blessing.

RCA Victor offer a fascinating curiosity in the form of Paul Hindemith’s In Sturm und Eis. With its beguiling textures and fertile melodic invention, this symphonic work is the score which this restless, increasingly self-conscious composer wrote for his friend Arnold Fanck’s film Im Kampf mit dem Berg.

Whether it gets an Oscar this month or not, Scott Hicks’s Shine is the most remarkable film to have emerged in Australasia since The Piano. By coincidence, Shine too is about pianism in straitened circumstances, though its provenance and purpose have a far more desperate urgency.

In Cinema Century you will find tracks from all the great films, from City Lights (1931) to Schindler’s List (1994). All are freshly recorded, most by the orchestra which Silva Screen have established in Prague. No prizes for guessing who sings the arias from Diva and Room With A View. Yes, Lesley Garrett sure gets around.

 ‘Smoke Gets In Your Eyes’ resurfaces in a brand-new compilation recorded by an opera star: Lesley Garrett – Soprano in Hollywood.  Garrett arrives on the back of a big, smooth orchestral sound, and her rendering – pitched significantly higher than Dunne’s – is stagily operatic.

As is her ‘Lover’, her ‘Danny Boy’ and her Gershwin medley: each number is marked by impeccable tone and diction, but seems to have no heart. 

Maurice Jarre is back, in the form of a special tribute to David Lean recorded at the Barbican: A Tribute to Sir David Lean includes suites from Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia. 

In The Cult Files you will find just about every major television theme tune you grew up with (this is a threat, as well as a promise). And in Cinema Century you will find tracks from all the great films, from City Lights (1931) to Schindler’s List (1994). All are freshly recorded, most by the orchestra which Silva Screen have established in Prague. No prizes for guessing who sings the arias from Diva and Room With A View. Yes, Lesley Garrett sure gets around.

No year is complete without some Hitchcock and some Herrmann: with Herrmann Hitchcock – A Partnership in Terror, Silva Screen neatly roll the two into one. Performed by the City of Prague Philharmonic under the baton of Paul Bateman, this is a fine collection of climactic musical moments. A

 Meanwhile Quatermass and the Pit offers a compilation of scores by the prolific Tristram Cary, whose parallel careers have been as a leading composer of electronic music, and as a noted teacher at the Royal College of Music.  

Recorded sound is so cleaned-up these days that the hiss of needle on vinyl has become intensely nostalgic. The same can be said of soundtracks, which is why Auvidis’s ‘Movies To Listen To’ are doing so well.

Their latest release – Chansons de films des années 30/40 – comes with the added bonus of dialogue and noises off: the record reeks of Gauloises and calvados. And the sound quality is wonderfully crummy: tea-chest pianos, and bands whose mangled tones seem to emanate from a firmly-shut telephone box.

Too much professionalism can be a disability. To listen to the score for Mission: Impossible, however, is to appreciate professionalism applied as it should be.

Its composer-producer Danny Elfman has an impressive string of credits – Beetlejuice, Batman and Edward Scissorhands among them – and he brings to each new challenge a graceful melodic gift.

He’s adept at suspense, with a clever use of strings and percussion, but you never feel with him, as you often do with British film composers, that you’re just getting a recipe. 

From the other side of the pond comes You Must Remember This... Great Film Songs. Well, some of this I do indeed remember, but some I’m delighted to encounter for the first time.

Adrian Johnston’s score for Jude opens with a nice evocation of rural desolation, but, as one short track follows another, it begins to feel like a mere souvenir of the film, rather than a thing to savour for itself. 

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop may have been cruelly whittled away, but its influence has been enormous. It’s certainly discernible, for example, in Microcosmos, a sparky musical miscellany by Bruno Coulais designed to accompany a new French film about insect-life. 

Each year brings a new package of Bernard Herrmann film favourites: this time Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts suites from Psycho, Vertigo and Taxi Driver. Every track on this album already exists in several recordings – some of them excellent – but that in no way diminishes its value.

Salonen coaxes wonderful things from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and demonstrates better than anyone so far why Herrmann deserves to be in the front rank, not only of film composers, but composers tout court.