Music Webmaster Len Mullenger

FILM MUSIC RECORDINGS REVIEWS

 


 
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EDITOR's RECOMMENDATION July 1999

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John WILLIAMS Jane Eyre OST SILVA SCREEN FILMCD 204 [33:51]

 

Crotchet



 

Once you are reconciled to a CD running 33:51 you can relax in the opalescent light of this classily romantic pastoral score. This is not Williams the heroic comic-book dramatist but the painter of subtle water-colour shades.

Most of the tracks fall easily into two categories: eerie and breezily romantic. The Mozartian string quartet depicting Festivity at Thornfield is the one exception.

The nightmare tracks are neatly represented by the mists of Lowood reminiscent of the Cornish Dances (Malcolm Arnold). This and other tracks explore Schoenbergian territory. Grace Poole is all batwings and net curtains blowing out gently in the whispering night-wind. The Thwarted Wedding resounds to material influenced by the bird-shrieks of Herrmann's score for Psycho (1960).

To Thornfield is a scherzando recalling one of Alan Hovhaness's sword-wind dances but brisk with Northern moorland sunshine. A reserved romance hangs over many tracks. This is especially prominent in the Jane Eyre theme, the Overture and Across The Moors (worthy to stand alongside the effulgence of Sarde's Tess score). Restoration is a string paean: part-Sibelian and part-Elgarian. The final Reunion at first sounds suspiciously like the Fauré Pavane from Pelleas but having turned that dangerous corner explores with subtle emotion surge and undertow of joy in sadness; sadness in joy.

The atmosphere of much of this score (well the pastoral bits) drifts agreeably from the soft supplicatory music of Gerald Finzi (now popular but hardly heard of in 1970) to the soft focus anguish of Stanley Myers' Cavatina from The Deerhunter; one voice predating the score; the other succeeding it. Fans of Herrmann's score for The Trouble With Harry will want this disc.

This film is the version with Susannah York (Jane), George C Scott (Edward Rochester), Nyree Dawn Porter, Kenneth Griffith, Jean Marsh, Ian Bannen, and Michele Dotrice.

The notes by George Curry are from the original LP. For such an Anglophone score we should not be surprised that it was recorded at Anvil Studios, Denham. The contract orchestra is warmly and closely recorded in an often reverberant ambience.

The tray insert warns us that the CD has been re-mastered from the original tapes, now almost 30 years old, and that 'some distortion is still evident'. This is not at all dramatic and can be heard on the more climactic moments for the strings and the higher register notes of the piano. There is nothing here to put you off.

The total timing is not listed on the back of the tray. Was no other suitable (even contrasting) score available? I recommend this album warmly and have only moderated the score because of the short playing time.

Reviewer

Rob Barnett

Ian Lace is even more enthusiastic:-

I would just add that it is little wonder that John Williams, himself, is so fond of this score, one of his most beautiful, so eloquently played here under the composer's direction. As for the playing time, I am reminded of that old adage - 'less is often more.' Just one other observation, I was struck by the opening Jane Eyre theme. It sharply anticipates John Williams's own score for Presumed Innocent. I wonder if he made some mental connection between the sufferings of Jane and that of the wife turned justified(?) murderess?

Reviewer

Ian Lace

Reviewer

Rob Barnett

Ian Lace

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