Max Steiner: HELEN OF TROY KING RICHARD AND THE CRUSADERS
Helen of Troy MYTHUS 1955FI95.1/2 - 108'
The Fifties decade, with the uprising of the big screen formats and the definitive settle of colour on the movies, marks the beginning of the end on the career of the profilic Max Steiner, and although his frantic rhythm still remained practically unaltered till the end of his life (five titles, as an example, in 1956 and 1959), his style has reached an ideal degree of ripeness and solidity. The birth of CinemaScope in 1953, with the subsequent invasion of Epics and movies of spectacular look, allow Steiner to deliver in 1954 two of his best works on this decade: Helen of Troy and King Richard and the Crusaders. The following years saw the austrian-american composer more centered on dramatic titles -with his seven terrific scores for director Delmer Daves on top: A Summer Place (1959), The Hanging Tree (1959), Susan Slade (1961), Parrish (1961), Rome Adventure (1962), Spencer's Mountain (1963) and Youngblood Hawke (1964)-, to conclude with the relatively forgotten A Distant Trumpet (1964), whose splendid music claims for a complete edition.
King Richard and the Crusaders ORIENT 02B95.54 - 66'
For Helen of Troy (1954) Steiner composed a long and complex score full of his more typical and personal musical gestures: Steiner wasn't Rózsa, and the usual work of musicology research which used to do the hungarian composer when he faced an Epoch Film, was the more opposite to Steiner's normal system of composing. In Helen of Troy he uses a simple four-note motif as base of his score (heared as well at the beginning of the Overture as in the Main Title), and over it appears, develope and interrelate the rest of the themes, following his usual and classic schemes. The forty-five cues of the score are here presented, wisely, in nine movements, as a gigantic symphonic suite, to whom we have to add the stupendous Overture, now never used on the film projections (with the exception of the new and compulsory NTSC LaserDisc edition). King Richard and the Crusaders (1954) is, if possible, more near to the Steiner scores of the forties than Helen of Troy, and the use of old english musical elements, as customary on his author, remains perfectly integrated on the score. Steiner's music never cheat, and his enthusiasm at the time to be closed, equally, to all kind of genres and styles turns out to be praisable. As happens with the previous record, the thirty-seven cues are offered on six long movements, a perfect compendium of the virtues of his unmistakable sound. In both cases, and as correspond to the fact that they are original recordings, is the composer himself which leads the orchestra.
