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Posted: |
Apr 3, 2015 - 10:23 AM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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Listening to the sample track underscoring Terry's stagger had me shouting, "All right, let's go to work!" at just the precise moment. Boy am I psyched for the full listen when the package arrives.
When this thing arrived, what, a couple months ago, I broke it out to accompany a few meals and listened to the entire CD over the course. Sort've a meal's-over/stop/-pick-it-up-from-there-next-meal process. The problem was that I was taken in several times and had to get up from the kitchen table and note track numbers from the CD player in the living room.
Well, this morning I finally had the sit-my-butt-down session for the full end-to-end listen.
This soundtrack on its own tells a story. Nothing new there. It just happens to be one of the best most sophisticated ones to do that. It doesn't matter if you have never seen the film. You 'see' it. And it will make you want to see it. If you have seen it, you will want to see it again. And keep listening.
The CD picks up the beauty in the music, beauty that may have been taken for granted in the viewing and overshadowed by the power of combined high drama/acting you can sink your teeth into/stunning location filming.
Roof Morning underscores the early scene with Terry's young friend among the pigeon coops. It blew me away. There is something in the simple harp flourish on top of woodwind/flute chord that conveys mystery both hazy and surreal. I am very familiar with Hudson County and the scenes on the apartment rooftop contain definitive images for this former Jerseyite. The music lends tremendous power to images both filmed and imagined.
There was tenderness if not a bit of the tentative kind, at first, in Glove Scene that we often coin "achingly beautiful." That is all shattered with the same's Coda. It is an example of masterful transitions, often jarring, that occur throughout the score a la subtlety abruptly giving way to scintillating drama.
Both Pigeons And Beer and Waterfront Love Theme underscore the budding romance between Terry and Edie. The latter is a classic fox trot with solo muted trumpet and reeds that give it a Glenn Miller Orchestra-feel. I've heard that sound in so many late 40s-early 50s productions! As to the former, it is a powerful love theme that at times seems to transfer from main melody to counterpoint and it's hard to say which arrangement is superior.
These are all in the first fourteen tracks, which are brief and reflect the composer's approach to the unfolding drama and romance. #15/Cab And Bedroom underscores the seminal Terry and Charley scene. Oh, those muted trumpet triplets when Terry pushes the gun away and Charley slumps back. It is, again, a sound that is classic cinema. There follows a bluesy sax and then tortured strings that capture both their closeness as brothers and Terry's devastating self-confession. And then another sudden transition as Charley orders the driver to head to the Garden.
"Transitions." The car in the alley flies past, revealing in its wake Charley's body hanging on a hook. Stirring transition. Charley's Death. 'Nuf said.
Dead Pigeons. "A pigeon for a pigeon!" Terry is devastated by the kid's rejection. He's ready to pack it in. Edie consoles him. The sense of dread is palpable. This cue, the lengthiest, captures the tragedy that is Terry Malloy.
Unsophisticate that I can be, I never noticed until now that the theme played by solo french horn over the Main Title does not reappear until the picture's climax. But I was confused since it is included in The Challenge And The Fight which my ears told me is not in the film. The ears were correct. And the film is fine without it. Well, now that I have heard it...OH MAN HOW COULD THEY HAVE CUT IT OUT. Or maybe they were right to cut it out, I dunno! The drama is something else. Incredible transitions in the cue's entirety nonetheless, underscoring the cauldron of emotions about to spill over to the inevitable all-out brawl to the faces of the dockworkers bowed in shame.
Finally, the unforgettable Walk And End Title. Can't top Mr. Fake's description that closes the excellent liner notes:
"...Bernstein has one solitary trumpet soaring above every other instrument in a spectacular descant of the love theme. It remains among the most stirring images of otherwise unrelated thematic ideas in the history of film music, topped in majesty only by those final crashing chords in the brass, complete with their resounding barrage from tam tams, timpani and bass drum. A more powerful finish to a 45-minute film score one simply will never hear!"
Agreed.
One final note: "The Extras" include Blue Goon Blues – Whistle, which I believe was a sound accompanying the goading of Terry into the alley. Do I detect a precursor to the Jets' identifying whistle?
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Posted: |
Jul 10, 2020 - 6:53 PM
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By: |
EricHG30
(Member)
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I'm new to this forum (Hi!) and only recently got this recording.
I think it's pretty terrific, and easily replaces the previous version I had, although I am glad to have a stereo recording of Bernstein's suite elsewhere (but, as mentioned, it misses some key music).
As to the sound quality, it sounds pretty terrific to me. However, as a huge Bernstein fan and someone who collects his cast albums, it does strike me that... Candide's original cast album was recorded two years later, and West Side Story three years later. Both were Columbia recordings, produced by the great Godard Lieberson, who practically invented the modern cast album and whose work, partly due to his involvement and partly due to the great Columbia recording studio in New York, always sounded decades better than any other company's cast albums until the mid 1970s. They were also two of the first stereo recordings (I'm not sure about West Side Story, but in the case of Candide, the stereo version was not released for purchase until the 1960s). And both recordings in their current remastered state sound *brilliant*. Probably just as good as the best recordings until the digital age. (You can add the 1958 "TV Cast" recording Columbia did of his 1951 musical, Wonderful Town, to this list too--which wasn't a true soundtrack of the tv version of that musical that aired with star Roz Russell, but had the TV cast go into the studio). In comparison On the Waterfront doesn't sound two years older than the Candide recording but at least a decade older. Which was a let down for me (but, I know, too much to expect).
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