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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Mother of all pirate movies, 29 Aug 2007
Errol Flynn. Korngold. Michael Curtiz. What can go wrong? NOTHING!! The movie is a classic and this soundtrack has been criminally Unavailable for years but this release makes up for that in spades. The sound is first rate, the performance is excellent and the packaging of the product is brilliant. Congratulations to Naxos for such a first class product.
This music is what movies are all about. Korngold at his best accompanying the best pirate film ever made bar none. They really don't make 'em like this anymore, more is the pity. The whole score is present here for the first time and it sounds beautiful from beginning to end. A recommendation to purchase this shouldn't need to be made because anyone worth their salt would have been fighting to find it as I have for years. Now I have and it is well worth the wait. perfect.
Now Naxos................where the blazes is El Cid PLEEEEEEASE?
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Very well, Mr. Pitt--Show them how to lower those colors!", 16 Nov 2007
1. THE SEA HAWK is presented on (or, rather, explodes from) CD 1 and the first half of CD 2--over 114 minutes in all. But where to begin with this "Aztec wrought-gold" gem of a recording? Perhaps with some context. What we have here is the globally-acknowledged, consensus-based greatest film swashbuckler (or, to use Erich Wolfgang Korngold's term, "schwanzbuchler") score of the first half of the 20th Century. And, possibly, all of the last century plus--so far--the 21st Century. THE SEA HAWK is Korngold's most famous and greatest film symphony. A case could easily be made (Oscar or no Oscar award) that it is his finest New World composition period! This unparalleled music is also a major reason (if not THE reason) why Korngold's name lives on as one of the most accomplished (but vastly under rated and unappreciated) composer of our time. It has provided (and remains) the portal or spring board for many to discover his contagious and addictive catalog of compositions. THE SEA HAWK is Korngold's fourth (or third, since THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX [1939] is more talk than action) and, lamentably, final swashbuckler score.
2. The film was directed with "firm control" (to put it mildly) by no-nonsense Michael Curtiz. Likewise, the performance of the complete score in this remarkable recording is, indeed, conducted with firm control by Maestro Stromberg. Even casual listening quickly reveals the presence of orchestral voices never heard in previous recording (both original and re-recorded) plus the dark-panel richness of a superb and balanced performance (as well as sumptuous sound capture)--the audio equivalent of a rare Merlot. The impact is even more startling with studio monitors or similar high-end audio equipment. And any sound system will testify to the spot-on tempos and intra-thematic tempo changes that, up until now, only Korngold himself could pull off. Part of this pure pleasure is due to the larger orchestra demanded by the original score and provided in this recording compared to the smaller ensembles utilized for the concert suite and score fragments presented in previous modern recordings. Then there is the huge restoration and re-orchestration infrastructure that supports this peerless performance with John Morgan at the helm.
3. Once again Stromberg provides expansive evidence that he is clearly Korngold's modern-day conducting equal! Similarly, Restoration Magician Morgan demonstrates once again that he is well up to the combined skills of orchestrators such as Hugo Friedhofer, Milan Roder, Ray Heindorf, and Simon Bucharoff who formed Korngold's support group for THE SEA HAWK.
4. The Main Title (CD 1, Track 1) is a complex, multi-theme overture to the film. Not only did it have to be reconstructed by Messrs Morgan and Stromberg from scratch, but here Korngold establishes a new, all-time record (which is still standing) for sardining themes into brief, opening-credits music.
5. For the Isthmus of Panama scenes, Director Curtiz required a "bad" jungle. Studio staff complied and converted six acres of nearby Warner Bros. property into a swamp. The set soon attracted hordes of non-guild-member extras in the form of local mosquitoes (plus other assorted fauna). So when the crew of the Albatross swats bugs on screen, they may not be pretending! Korngold captures this in a single note (Thorpe's Men Hiding--Gold Caravan on CD 1, Track 13 at about the 00:40 mark), Not quite enough to qualify as the first nano-leitmotiv for tiny flying insects or, rather, the swatting of very small bugs. A lost opportunity?
6. Maria's Song (CD 1, Track 15) is, well, lost in translation. Lyrics are mostly unintelligible (sung phonetically?). Fortunately, the performance is at least melodious and, mercifully, often (but not often enough) neutralized by being obliterated by the orchestra.
7. The choral version of the Main Title never fails to bring a smile to one's lips. It's when men who had been galley slaves and on the edge of death (or over it) a few cinematic moments before, suddenly burst into hearty and lusty song sailing back to England on a hijacked Spanish galleon (Happy Sailing on CD 2, Track 5). Patently preposterous of course except--in an opera. Korngold is said to have had a grand sense of humor. Maybe he intended this to be humorous, maybe not. The Russian chorus pretending to be harmonious British seamen in this recording is no less amusing than American singers doing the same in the film. Both excel at slurring the lyrics.
8. Also included is the extended orchestral music from the ending of the longer version of the film (Finale--End Cast, CD 2, Track 9). This extended cut targeted the wartime British public. Never shown on American theater screens, it first surfaced in the USA in a dual-set of laser discs released in 1990.
9. Typical of a Morgan and Stromberg undertaking, even the score for the theatrical trailer (CD 2, Track 10) is included. But this is no "ordinary" trailer music. Korngold's score for the original preview contains new variations on themes from the film's score and is presented in three parts (the trailer itself has long since vaporized). Previews for later re-releases of THE SEA HAWK (which are still around) use pieces of music from this original three parter. Now on to a light-weight melodrama with heavy-duty classical and classic-film music.
10. DECEPTION (on CD 2) is the world premiere of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's complete film score in a modern recording. Nine other relatively recent recording exist on optical discs that either present bits and pieces of the score or are tangentially related to the film. The latter consist of the Cello Concerto in C, Op 37 which is the orchestrally scaled-down, musically stretched-out concert-hall version of the film's Cello Concerto.
11. This recording offers a short, moody, but thoughtful and stark musical counterpoint to the pulse-pounding rush of THE SEA HAWK. Curiously, the xylophone is periodically prominent in both. Then there is: The Cello. The original film version of the Cello Concerto (CD 2, Track 25) in this recording (clocked at 7:23 minutes) is intense and edge-of-the-seat exciting in part because it is so compact (the cello soloist is Alexander Zagorinsky). Not the same experience as when listening to the now seemingly "dragged out," extended concert version (variously clocked at 11:50 minutes to 12:48 minutes depending on the recording). Brevity can be brilliant; bigger not necessarily better.
12. DECEPTION is one of Korngold's shorter film scores--it easily fits fully restored along with music from the original theatrical trailer on half a CD. This is because the film deals with the triangular trials and tribulations of those who happen to be in the classical-music business, and, naturally, Korngold included a hefty dose of music from a number of classical composers. His own score is scattered throughout the film, but as presented in this composite recording, you'd never know it. Talk about tonality!
13. Conducting and orchestral performance are once again top drawer in this remarkable recording. Maestro Stromberg has applied (as usual) the necessary orchestral discipline to successfully rekindle the raw energy that rendered Korngold's sound-track recordings without equal in their day (and still today in modern recordings by other conductors, although Charles Gerhardt comes close). Sound capture and mixing is first rate except for the opening moments of the Main Title (CD 2, Track 11) where individual instrument voices are a bit stream rollered by the orchestra at large. The restored Original Theatrical Trailer (CD 2, Track 24), courtesy of Mr. Morgan, makes one's ears pop with anticipation when contemplating the possibility of it being performed (sans any concretized "extension") in live performances.
14. The CD booklet is strictly an A-Team production. Mr. Rudy Behlmer, the de facto reigning Dean of "Golden-Age" Film Historians, probably knows more about Warner Bros. than Albert, Harry, Jack, and Sam ever did. In this extensive booklet, Behlmer expands upon his recent on-camera video-disc commentaries and hard-copy publications to provide a detailed (make that definitive) account of all matters regarding THE SEA HAWK, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, DECEPTION. This is a read you simply can't put down until done--the modern hallmark of an accomplished historian. Restoration and re-orchestration Master John Morgan offers an insider's view of the sheer enormity of time and resources (not to mention dedication and perspicacity) required to fully restore both film scores (see Q&A Sidebar for more). He also explains why it is physically impossible for the original score from THE SEA HAWK to be performed in a live concert setting as it was presented in the film and in this recording. Mr. Brendan Carroll, Korngold's definitive biographer, weighs in with essentially a note-by-note examination of both scores plus some fascinating new background information not included in his extensive Korngold biography. Carroll possesses the innate ability to jump back and forth from the macro to the micro in analyzing musical compositions. Here he does it yet again!
15. There is a disconcerting and quite disturbing reason apparently why the score for THE SEA HAWK has never been heard before in its entirety. Ready for this? The original manuscripts of the score were pretty much trashed! Now it's one thing for a conductor or a composer to slice and dice another composer's score. Quite another to slice and dice the other composer's original (and only extant) manuscript of that score. But that's what seems to have happened in the case of THE SEA HAWK. This apparently revolves around the historical recordings made by Charles Gerhardt and produced by Korngold's number two son, George, in the early to mid 70's. And surrounding these zeitgeist-transforming recordings, there are a number of things that simply don't seem to add up. Archivists (or librarians) provided Gerhardt/Korngold with original source materials, not photocopies. Gerhardt then apparently proceeded to edit down Korngold's original manuscripts with paint-brush-sized blackened mark ups and "white overs" to retain only score "highlights" that were later recorded on vinyl. Couldn't Gerhardt differentiate an original from a photocopy? Easy to confuse the two today, but not back in the 70's! It also seems unfathomable that George Korngold would allow such a thing to happen to his father's legacy. Serving as custodians for the preservation of art for future generations apparently was tossed into the trash back then! All of this, of course, will remain the province of future researchers to untangle and get to the proverbial bottom of things.
16. Circumstances surrounding the restoration and re-orchestration of DECEPTION are far less nefarious, but still no walk in the park. Pieces of music existed, but full scores did not--perhaps simply because they had been (and continue to be) "misfiled". To determine what was missing, Morgan and Stromberg "did a lot of listening to the original music tracks" on analog tape. Fortunately, the complete score for the Cello Concerto with the cello part was discovered in toto. It appeared "untouched" since it was used in the film.
17. DECEPTION, sadly, was Korngold's farewell to film symphonies. Many reasons have been advanced--some by the composer himself--for his rather abrupt career change including: the post-war demise of overly-romantic films (and the demand for composers of corresponding scores which Korngold was without equal); a need for the composer to return to his roots of "serious music"; a longing to recapture the fame of his youth in the concert halls of Europe and, especially, in the Vienna Opera House; boredom with American chocolates; the list goes on. Korngold was offered several subsequent (and notable) films, but turned all of them down except one--MAGIC FIRE (1955). This is a film biography of composer Richard Wagner. Korngold was hired not to compose, but to edit, arrange, conduct, and supervise the scoring of Wagner's music. "I'll do it ... (but) only to protect Wagner" he remarked going in. Unfortunately, this wasn't enough. The film was DOA (dead on arrival) and remained so even after (or as a result of) numerous re-edits.
18. And so, Korngold ended his film-music career as he had begun it some 20 odd years earlier by massaging and conducting the music of another. His first "break-through" film was A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM (1935) where he reprocessed and conducted Felix Mendelssohn's music. Ironic (or intentional?) bookends.
William F. Flanigan, Jr., Ph.D.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amongst the world's top ten film scores, 4 Feb 2008
if you managed to scroll through some of the other reviews, or better still have seen the film, you will know that this score is a real classic, and benchmark for many of Hollywood's greatest composers. The Sea Hawk is a great romantic adventure film, but just a big a star as Errol Flynn is Korngold's music. It's a beautiful, dramatic and exciting piece of classical music in it's own right, and Naxos have done the world a favour by giving us this recording.
If you have any interest in film music at all, then you must buy this CD.
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~ Erich Wolfgang Korngold
~ Dimitri Tiomkin
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~ Max Steiner
~ Alfred Newman
See all 15 tracks on this disc
![The Sea Hawk [1940]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41VKsQrqpxL._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
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