A new and exemplary record comes to join the already considerable collection 100 Years of Film Music 1895-1995, which the RCA/BMG CLASSICS conjunction developed as an extension of the already mythical The Classic Film Scores, the basic seventies production of ill-fated George Korngold and Charles Gerhardt. With the figure excuse of writer Mark Twain, conductor William T. Stromberg and arranger John W. Morgan (whose restoring work of the Film Music classics is worth of consideration) join together two stupendous works of the two more famous Vienna sons in the Gold Age of the Movies.First in time (but not on the record) is a long reconstruction of the vibrant and joyful Erich Wolfgang Korngold's score for The Prince and the Pauper (1937), the brilliant adaptation of director William Keighley of the Twain classic, here offered on a version which retrieve part of the material written by Korngold, but retired of the final cut of the film during its editing. Much more visual and diaphanous than his previous, and very operatic, Captain Blood (1935) and Anthony Adverse (1936), the brilliant sound of this new recording permit to hear the elegant timbre games of Korngold's music, something which, as with all the rest of his contemporary colleagues, it wasn't clean enough on the thirties original recordings. Stromberg's performance is correct and adequate, although a little bland -an slightly unforgivable sin with Korngold's passionate music-.
As contrast, Max Steiner's music for The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944), biopic of the writer's life, is excellently performed, with the necessary equilibrium and sense of humor. When Steiner composed this score, his name was sufficiently recognized after the thunderous success of Gone With The Wind (1939) and his recent work on Since You Went Away (1944) -which will gain him his third Oscar-, and his music has the ideal 'american' tone to face this story of southern ambiance, full of references to popular themes and songs (as usual on many of his works), and whose interrelation with his customary thematic way of work shows the very high quality degree of the work of the prolific viennese composer. M.A.F.
