Miklós Rózsa
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Diane (1956), directed by David Miller and starring Lana Turner, Pedro Armendariz, and Roger Moore, was an MGM medieval costume drama that yielded a bumper crop of gorgeous music, courtesy of composer Miklós Rózsa. As it happened, Rózsa had long been fascinated by the historical figure of Diane de Poitiers, who wielded as much power in the medieval world as any woman this side of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and while he wasn't crazy about the actual production, he was stimulated to write and record an enormous amount of music for the 110-minute movie. The first disc in this double-disc set is given over to Rózsa's finished score in its unedited form, so that every cue is heard as it was intended to be heard -- complete -- before the final edit of the movie cut some parts of the score and eliminated others. Most of the score is a mix of material evocative of the period and the grandeur of the setting in the 13th century French court, intermingled with some rich, dense romantic and dramatic material. Some sections, such as "Cortege," are as bold as any of the march music that Rózsa wrote for Ben-Hur two years later, while "Warning" recalls his work in film noir from a decade before this movie. Disc Two opens with Rózsa's original versions of the material written for the film, assembled in chronological sequence -- before the final edit of the movie dictated changes -- thus, we get to hear Rózsa's first, as well as his last thoughts on each of the sequences in the movie, before the final edit altered the music one last time; it's all sufficiently different to justify its inclusion, and offers a rare glimpse into Rózsa's music as a work-in-progress. The 40 minutes of the scoring from Diane -- which also anticipates elements of his later scoring for El Cid, set in medieval Spain, has been augmented with 37 minutes of outtakes from the composer's score for Plymouth Adventure, plus three of guitarist Vincente Gomez's improvisations from the score for Moonfleet, which could not be fit on to those respective CDs. The sound is exceptionally good, especially given that the source tapes were never intended to be heard fully exposed digitally in this way -- Rózsa knew how to bring out the richest resonances of the different sections of the orchestra, in the most lush way possible. The annotation is also exceptionally good and overall, the people at FSM have outdone themselves with this release. Bruce Eder, All Music Guide Tracks:
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Miklós Rózsa|
Similar Artists: Max Steiner Erich Korngold Dimitri Tiomkin Bernard Herrmann Hans J. Salter More >> | Followers: Bruce Broughton Jerry Goldsmith Henry Mancini Maurice Jarre More >> |
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