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A feast for `western' buffs
`All Time Great Western Themes' (Times Music; Rs. 295)
THE CHASE through the sagebrush. The cattle drive across the endless prairie. The saloon brawl. The shootout on Main Street. The ambush in the canyon. The eleventh hour rescue by the cavalry. The square dance in the frontier fort. The Western film genre was to always fall back on clichéd set pieces and situations, and no complaints! Audiences around the world came to expect at least half a dozen standard elements every time they paid to see a film set in the Wild, Wild West. The no-nonsense classic Westerns had a trademark sound of their own, made up of pipe and drum, the banjo and the mouth organ. The great film themes of the 1940s - 60s still have the power to evoke nostalgic memories of great moments in cinema.
Which is why this celebration of a century of the `Western' is so welcome. The opening track is Elmer Bernstein's sound track music for `The Magnificent Seven'.
The oldest film represented on the CD is `Stagecoach', the John Ford classic of 1939 that launched the career of John Wayne. From 1946 comes `Duel in the Sun', which featured Gregory Peck and Joseph Cotton. Dimitri Tiomkin, then Hollywood's Man for all Epics, turned in an appropriately ponderous score. Tiomkin is over represented on this album: there can be no complaints about his theme for `Rio Bravo' (1959). But his work for `The Unforgiven', is hardly memorable. Some films are represented by songs rather than instrumental themes: Do Not Forsake Me, the plaintive vocal that the producers of `High Noon' stapled on to the film a week after its initial release in 1952, is one of the genre's oddest products. From `Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' is that runaway hit song composed by Burt Bacharach, Raindrops keep falling on my head.
The early 1960s gave birth to the made-in-Italy westerns, mostly crafted by Sergio Leone and featuring the then unknown Clint Eastwood as "The Man With No Name". The distinctive musical style of this sub-genre was the work of Ennio Morricone, who innovatively conjured up the sound of the whiplash, the stomping of horses and the wail of the prairie dog. The CD includes music from two of the `Dollars trilogy' films -- `For a Few Dollars More' and `Once Upon A Time In The West'. Hollywood's `spaghetti' clone `Hang `Em High' (1967) is also to be found on this album. Borderline Westerns that have been sneaked into the album include the 1966 Steve McQueen vehicle, `Nevada Smith'. There are also music tracks from two TV western serials: `The Lone Ranger' and `The High Chaparral'. With so many classic western themes jostling to be included, it does seem odd to include these minor and forgettable products. However one must be thankful that the music from that semi documentary epic, `How The West Was Won' (1962) has found place; as well as the only watchable western of the 1990s -- Kevin Costner's `Dances With Wolves'.
None of the tracks are originals but they have been rendered with scrupulous regard to the original scores, by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.
ANAND PARTHASARATHY
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