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This title is now sold out Music Composed and Conducted by Elmer Bernstein It is in a state of absolute shock that we see our latest Elmer Bernstein CD released in the shadow of his passing. There are no words to express the grief and sadness we feel. It is with love and memories of happier times that we announce the release of a deluxe, definitive edition of The Great Escape, an honest-to-goodness film music masterpiece. For Elmer. – Robert Townson This is a CD that reasonable minds thought would never exist. It was a common occurrence in the 1960s for film scores to receive a separate performance solely for release as a soundtrack album. This practice offered the opportunity to edit some cues, expand others, and do all of this work more economically than what a release of the original soundtrack recording would cost to produce. (Musician union fees often dissuaded such releases.) The Great Escape was originally recorded in January and February of 1963. The score was recorded at Goldwyn Studios in Culver City, California with an orchestra of some 62 musicians. There, a score of over 90 minutes of music came vibrantly to life for the very first time. A month later, Elmer Bernstein’s score was reborn as a recording featuring about 32 minutes of highlights and utilizing an orchestra of about half the size. The music, having come from the pen of a master and being led by the baton of a master, still sounded glorious. Skillful orchestration resulted in a recording of considerable energy and one which belied its humble manpower. This recording, released on United Artists Records concurrently with the release of the film, is what the world has always perceived as the original soundtrack from The Great Escape. For many of the 40 years since the recording of that album took place it has been believed that the tapes of the film recording of the score had been lost to time. MGM/UA is a company that cleared vast amounts of space on the studio lot by discarding what, if it still existed today, would be a priceless archive of printed music and audio master tapes. In 1997, as part of a series of new recordings of classic scores of the past, Elmer Bernstein and I began planning a trip to Scotland to produce new recordings of his scores for The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape. We had previously been to Glasgow and recorded To Kill A Mockingbird. The two new albums would be recorded as part of a 75th birthday celebration for Elmer during which he would also conduct the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in a concert of selections from many of his film scores. Since even the original orchestrations for The Great Escape had long since perished, any music we recorded from this score was going to need to be reconstructed and reorchestrated, based on Elmer’s original sketches, which were all he had retained. We undertook the work but were limited by time and budget restrictions. To the original thirteen tracks selected for the soundtrack album, we took the opportunity to add the cues First Casualty and Hilts Captured. This topped our new recording (released on the BMG label) up to about 39 minutes. It seemed pretty exciting at the time. I returned again to The Great Escape earlier this year to prepare a CD reissue of the original album to coincide with a new special edition DVD of the film, which MGM had set for release in May. I first verified with Elmer that he had no tapes whatsoever containing any music other than the album recording. Regrettably, it seemed that the contents of our new CD would be no different from those that came before. This being the case, I wanted to make sure we would at least be working from the best source possible and, in doing so, that I could hopefully infuse a new degree of definitiveness. To help facilitate this, MGM’s Chris Neel recalled every tape source relating to The Great Escape that was residing in the studio archives. We had multiple masters and safety copies of the 2-track stereo album. These were the actual tapes used for the LP and all previous CDs of this score. Also recovered were multiple sets of original 3-track tapes that had remained virtually unplayed since they were recorded. The sound on the 3-tracks was pristine. A marked improvement over what had ever been heard before, it was as though the score has been recorded yesterday. This additional effort of scrounging had provided a great windfall. Amongst this veritable boatload of master tapes were four inconspicuous white boxes, unmarked and unlabeled. During the mastering session we decided to put up the tapes from these boxes and give a listen to what they held. They were 2-track tapes and so there was no possibility that they could sound as good as what we were getting off of the 3-tracks, but curiosity got the better of us. Per the recorded slate, my mastering engineer, Erick Labson, and I were about the hear 1M1 of, well, something. Sure enough we found ourselves again listening to the memorable march from The Great Escape. But … it was different. A weight, a power, an intensity … this wasn’t the album recording at all but was instead the actual the film recording! I was stunned. Even if we had nothing but many alternate takes of this same piece, we now had one hell of a bonus track for our CD. But as the tape continued to play we came across not only all of the cues familiar from the album, but also a great many cues I knew only from the film. And even the cues which had been re-recorded for the album were a revelation here due to their previous release involving the reduced orchestra. Not one note of what we were hearing, in the performance we were listening to, had been heard separately from the film, by anyone, in over 40 years. And this went on … and on. In the end, we had over 90 minutes of music … 42 cues. I was ecstatic! Here was the complete original film recording of The Great Escape, in full stereo sound! Not flawless, mind you … there was the occasional bit of distortion and print-through where some particularly loud sections of the score seemed to echo, but wonderfully big and impactful music in a historic performance long thought lost to the ages. And so, this brings me to my third CD release of music from Elmer Bernstein’s The Great Escape. And as wonderful as his soundtrack album recording was, and as triumphant as it was to hear the RSNO invest the music with new life and have it captured with contemporary recording technology, this third CD is most definitely the charm. Inclusive of large and important cues such as At First Glance, Escape Time and At The Station along with short but cherishable cues like The Scrounger, Water Faucet and Hilts and Ives, this 2 CD Deluxe Edition closes the book on what anyone could want from this score. The discovery of the tapes that led to this CD is also celebrated by an original cover painting by Matthew Joseph Peak. It may have taken 41 years but this is a Great Escape for the ages. — Robert Townson, June 2004 Disc One 1. Main Title (2:28) 2. At First Glance (3:09) 3. Premature Plans (2:27) 4. If At Once (2:30) 5. Forked (1:26) 6. Cooler (1:57) 7. Mole (1:27) 8. X (:54) 9. Tonight We X (:36) 10. The Scrounger (:28) 11. Blythe (3:20) 12. Water Faucet (1:22) 13. Interruptus (1:32) 14. The Plan (:41) 15. The Sad Ives (1:00) 16. Green Thumbs (2:26) 17. Hilts and Ives (:36) 18. Cave In (1:59) 19. Restless Men (1:54) 20. Booze (1:46) 21. Discovery (3:37) 22. Various Troubles (3:52) Disc Two 1. Panic (2:04) 2. Pin Trick (:59) 3. Hendley’s Risk (1:43) 4. Released Again (1:10) 5. Escape Time (4:14) 6. 20 Feet Short (3:04) 7. Foul Up (2:36) 8. At The Station (1:32) 9. On The Road (3:25) 10. The Chase (4:13) 11. First Casualty (2:34) 12. Flight Plan (2:11) 13. More Action (3:10) 14. Hilts Captured (2:57) 15. Road’s End (2:07) 16. Betrayal (2:19) 17. Three Gone (1:44) 18. Home Again (1:30) 19. Finale (1:28) 20. The Cast (1:17) Please click the following links to listen to the sound tracks: |
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