I have to agree. I was taken aback by the 'lesser' sound quality too

hammon, October 9, 2004; 8:45 AM

You are right, the sound quality is not very good but, yes, there is a warn in the back insert written in italian; the translation is something like this:

"Because of the damage suffered by some of the master tapes from the original soundtrack, the sound quality presents some anomalies that, in spite of our efforts, have been impossible to remove."

On the other hand, the quality of the composition is really outstanding, and I think the sound of the major themes is more than acceptable. In any case, I recommend the purchase of this recording to everyone interested in good music (without a doubt this is one of the best works in Morricone's curriculum).



angeldibujo, October 9, 2004; 4:24 PM

The variations in sound quality between some of the tracks is obvious and people who are more used to the high quality sound of today's score releases may be disappointed with the release as a whole.

With these older releases I usually try to bear in mind that these are much older scores; scores that were never recorded and mixed with a commercial release in mind (and if there was one in mind these cues were treated separately to improve the sound quality.) Recording technology back then had its limitations too, I suppose.

Anyone disappointed with the sound on this release should have a listen to Max Steiner's score for SHE (BYU/FMA release) or Herrmann's ON DANGEROUS GROUND (FSM). Now, these are archival!!

alan, October 9, 2004; 8:27 PM

I too was disappointed with the sound quality of the Italian 2-CD release, but the reasons above are the reasons cited on the CD itself.

The original masters of this score (for the use of the film producers) contained numerous takes of many of the pieces of music with different mixes, slightly different solo instruments and many long textural cues that were not on the original Arista album at all.

While I have no way of confirming this impression (though perhaps someone else could help), I suspect that part of the problem with this Italian release is that Arista would not release THEIR masters (if they even exist) of the original bunch of tracks as mixed for the 1982 album, so that the Italian producers instead either re-created those album tracks from the long archive of cues, or else imported the album tracks from someone else's source and then created all the other "new tracks" from that old archive (which easily has at least 4 hours of endless remixes and leftover small cues).

I have no doubt that the original material from the archive has deteriorated (it was on analog tape). But Arista for years and years seemed totally uninterested in letting other companies remaster and re-release the Marco Polo score. The only CD release I ever bought before this Italian one was clearly a bootleg of a pretty good transfer from vinyl. And yet I see (elsewhere on this site) that there were a couple of "official" re-releases (in Japan and Europe) on the Arista/Ariola label. I'd never encountered those. Were they any good? Or were those other cited releases vinyl-only?

Lastly, I don't really think that anyone provided a real "Nick Redman-like" approach to restoring these tracks. They were probably just put into ProTools or some similar program and given a perfunctory cleanup, often with certain tracks consisting of a few different shorter cues overlapped together with no attempt to match their disparate EQs, etc. This Italian release doesn't really seem like some serious labor-of-love to provide the best-sounding version.

Yet it's still a valuable effort to get basically all of the score material out there, and as such I'm grateful for it. In terms of my own composite of Marco Polo material, I combine tracks from various sources, and in the case of the "Monica's Song" material, I still use the track from the vinyl transfer bootleg rather than the one included on the Italian CD, since to me those original Arista mixes were golden.

This is one of my favorite Morricone scores, and I'm glad to have whatever versions of it I can. The Italian CD is somewhat uneven in audio quality, but it's certainly the most comprehensive release -- unlike some other "complete" new releases of old Morricone soundtracks, this one really does have a wealth of additional cues that were never available to the public before. Thus it's quite valuable source to use in compiling one's own "complete" version...and now that it's been released, there is quite simply a whole lot more MARCO POLO music out there in the world for those who admire and enjoy this score.

mcmoricz, January 17, 2008; 8:13 PM