This is the first of two double-disc collections from Silva Screen devoted to Western movie and television theme music, all played by
the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra under
Paul Bateman. Ranging across the history of the genre from the 1930s to the 1990s, the results are generally impressive, if occasionally a little weighty -- "A Fistful of Dollars" seems rather elephantine here compared with
Ennio Morricone's own rendition, but self-conscious "big tunes" such as
John Barry's "The John Dunbar Theme" from
Dances With Wolves,
Elmer Bernstein's main title music from
The Magnificent Seven and
The Sons of Katie Elder, and
Alfred Newman's main title theme from
How the West Was Won work just fine. The producers have also included oddities such as
Maurice Jarre's main theme from
Red Sun and
John Williams' theme from
The Rare Breed (1966), and a handful of television themes are here, most notably
Jerome Moross' main title theme from
Wagon Train. The sound is state of the art but the annotation is minimal, one is sorry to say, with nothing but movie and television series credits in the booklet.
