FILM MUSIC RECORDINGS REVIEWS

October 1998

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Victor YOUNG The Quiet Man The Dublin Screen Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Alwyn  SCANNÁN SFC 1501 [46:20]
		Crotchet (UK) iMVS (UK) Soundstone (USA)

John Ford's The Quiet Man (1952) was filmed in the lovely scenery of County Galway and neighbouring County Mayo, Ireland. The film was really an updating of The Taming of the Shrew with Maureen O'Hara tamed by a lusty John Wayne in a rare but successful comedy role. Victor Young's score relies heavily on traditional Irish melodies but is non the worse for that. This CD contains many familiar Irish tunes including: "The Wild Colonial Boy", "Galway Bay", "I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen" (here presented in a charming arrangement by Philip Lane), and the popular "The Isle of Innisfree" written a few years earlier, in 1949, by Irishman Richard Farrell. This last song is used prominently. The last four cues on this CD are the best with sparkling, rollicking, boisterous music for the "Prelude to the Big Fight" and "The Fight" itself, and lively and wistfully romantic music for "Finale" and End Title. The album is rounded off with what is virtually a four minute miniature tone poem, romantic and pastoral, based on "The Isle of Innisfree". A delightful nostalgic wallow.

Ian Lace

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