I bought the compilations of Maurice Jarre, John Barry and Jerry Goldsmith for a very low
price, I think at Amazon 'used&new', but still sealed. I must say, for that price I'm not going
to complain about anything. Even if you prefer the original recordings it's still interesting to
hear different interpretations or the better sound quality of these recordings. I also think
most are done very well and some were even conducted by the original composer (like on the
Goldsmith CD's). I know Tony Bremner got some flack for his version of Lawrence of Arabia
but the sound is much better than what was done in the early 1960-s.

Anyway, I was very happy with these recordings for such a low price. I can especially
recommend them to anyone not familiar with a certain composer to have a good introduction
so you can decide later what scores are worth getting as 'complete and original' CD's.

Even though the originals can still be found I still would recommend the re-recordings of 'To
Kill a Mockingbird' and 'The Ghost and Mrs Muir' done by Bernstein to the originals that sound
like shellac discs, even though Muir still sounds very good for it's age. But that's personal.

chris, May 28, 2007; 8:05 AM

Hi serifiot,

I have a number of these Silva re-recordings in my collection and as a general summary do recommend them but with reservation.

Firstly I think you need to distinguish between the compilation albums (such as The Classic John Barry) and the dedicated score re-recordings (such as the Last Valley).

I find the quality of the score albums to be greater than the compilations ... perhaps just my imagination(?) and can happily recommend the aforementioned Last Valley, along with Lion In Winter, Robin & Marian and Raise The Titanic.

You will note that I concentrate on John Barry which features mostly in my collection. Similarly, the Zulu and Walkabout scores are very , very good (forming part of their respective compilation albums).

Other compilation albums I have which are good~very good are those of Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Bernard Herrmann and Nino Rota. One which I was less satisfied with and have since sold is the Elmer Bernstein collection - good but not good enough with a few mediocre tracks.

In general, though, each is a good way to get a nice cross-section of material of a composer (e.g. the Goldsmith one includes his theme from Medicine Man and as a result of this I purchased the full score - now one of my favourite JG scores!) at a fairly cheap price. The sound reproduction is very good and, if you have the facility, the surround sound encoding is enjoyable, too.

Where the recordings fail, for me, is in comparison with the real thing. For those where I have an OST recording, the OST invariably wins. An example is the ski chase music from JB's OHMSS score. When this was released on the Silva James Bond in Action compilation disc I couldn't stop playing it; now that the OHMSS expanded release is available, the re-recording sounds off ... just not quite right.

Provided you accept that these are not exact-sounding copies of the originals then, yes, they are well worth adding to your collection.

Mitch, May 28, 2007; 8:12 AM