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Georges Delerue Commented Discography Film Music 2 |
D - M |
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Day of the
Dolphin, The
Japan CD SLCS-7036 Original soundtrack from the 1974 drama directed by Mike Nichols. It has a few quiet, lyrical pieces and many suspenseful ones using the ondes Martenot to create a special underwater feeling. Academy Award nomination for best score. In addition to nice quiet themes, like the main title and the famous Nocturne, this score features a rare venture into electronic music for Delerue. Some Baroque like passages recall the Grand Choral that attracted a lot of attention the year before in La Nuit américaine (Day for Night) by Truffaut.
Japan CD VIctor VICP-61178 (Japan) This reissue has exactly the same content as the SLCS one except for an additional track, which consists only in the main theme preceded by a few seconds of sound effects. If you already have the SLCS release you should not bother to get this one, on the contrary. There is no additional music, the booklet is disappointing compared to the SLCS release and the composer's name becomes for some obscure reason 'Dolerue'... |
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Dernier
métro, Le (The Last Metro) / La Femme
d'à côté (The Woman Next Door)
Belgium Prometheus PCD 113 Original soundtracks from two Truffaut dramas shot in 1980 and 1981. It has music not found on Milan's Bandes originales des films de François Truffaut, Les Passions amoureuses and Récits d'Apprentissage et d'amour. Those who own the Milan CDs can avoid this one unless they really want to have the complete original score from these two movies. To increase the running time, Prometheus repeats some tracks and includes a deadly boring eight minutes of jazzy source music from La Femme d'à côté. |
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Deux
Anglaises et le continent , Les (Two English
Girls)
France Hortensia CD FMC-600 Original soundtrack from the 1971 Truffaut drama. A perfect example of neoclassical chamber music with a highly personal romantic mood and unmistakable sense of melody. Three tracks contain dialogue and the final Epilogue has a monologue by the director himself. This is the most complete version of a landmark masterpiece : about two minutes longer than the Milan release in the Truffaut collection. The tracks with spoken words do not contain any different music; they illustrate how effectively the music works in the movie. Though the overall sound is a little muddy, just like on the Milan release, this soundtrack deserves the highest recommendation. |
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Dien Bien
Phu
France CD Polydor 513 289-2 Original soundtrack from the Pierre Schendoerffer war drama. Consists mainly of the Concerto de l'Adieu (Farewell Concerto) for large orchestra and some jazzy piano pieces used as source music. This soundtrack doesn't have much to offer besides the very classical concerto featuring a melancholy violin solo, similar to the one John Williams would write for Schlinder's List . This is the very last score the composer recorded in Europe. The name of the concerto appears to be only a strange coincidence; it's too dark to be a real musical testimony from Delerue. |
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Escape
Artist, The
U.S.A. CD Percepto 019 Original soundtrack from a 1982 drama by Caleb Deschanel produced by F.F. Coppola. Large orchestral score and full color 28-page booklet. Only about half of The Escape Artist score really deserved to be preserved on CD. However, American Zoetrope preferred to release the complete recording as a limited edition aimed to hard-core fans of the composer and collectors, and as a testimony of their enterprise in the cinematic world. A DVD of the movie was released at the same time. Newly installed in Hollywood, Delerue used an orchestra of 50 musicians to deliver what remains basically a gentle and poetical score. It was important to maintain a balance between the quiet and the loud passages, especially when they alternate in the same tracks. Unfortunately, the engineers who remixed the soundtrack ran against this rule. The first graphic shows waveforms of three versions of the End Credits track, one of the best parts of the score. The grey one represents the original recording taken from the 12'' laserdisc edition of the movie. One can see a good balance from the beginning to the end, and the music indeed sounds wonderful in the movie. The waveform in blue shows Robert Lafond's recreation of the same music, using digital samplers of acoustic instruments, for the CD release The Unpublished Film Music of Georges Delerue Volume 2 (DCM116). Lafond remained close to the dynamic of the original recording, generating only a slight increase of the output level in the full digital 24-bit mix. The third waveform, in pink, shows the Percepto Records version, which has been remixed too loudly in the peak passages. This leads to an uncomfortable listening experience. Moreover, since The Escape Artist is an analog recording at first, the result is irreparable distortion. The second graphic shows waveforms of eight other tracks taken from the Percepto Records CD. They are also very representative of the whole master. Tracks 2, 8, 9, 13 and 15, in green, show a (too) low output level, while tracks 3, 16 and 18, in pink, reach a so high a level at times that the music is spoiled. |
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Georg
Elser
Germany CD SPV 84-8441 Original soundtrack from a drama directed and played by Klaus Maria Brandauer. Relies mostly on strings and clarinet. Although this German movie has apparently many qualities the overall score is too subdued and easy to forget. The same year, Delerue was very busy with La Révolution française, also starring K.M. Brandauer. |
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Georges
Delerue: 30 ans de musique de film
Two CD set Odeon EMI 493539-2 57 original soundtracks excerpts from 47 different movies: Le Mépris, Tirez sur le pianiste, Cartouche, Jules et Jim, Garde à vue, Le Vieil homme et l'enfant, Le Diable par la queue, Le Dernier métro, etc. This huge and worthwhile compilation generates some frustration because we generally get only one excerpt from each film. The different moods and melodies don't have the time to sink in and the transition from one score to another is often brutal. We are forced to open the the booklet to see the numbered tracks listing. The selection from Women in Love by Ken Russell doesn't meet our expectations and the selection from Interlude is the London Sessions version, not the original 1968 recording, although it is slightly improved through the re-mastering. |
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Georges
Delerue: Les Inédits
CD Hortensia 887812 Original soundtrack excerpts from seven French movies: L'Age ingrat, L'ingénu, Oscar, Petite vertu, Les Cracks, Les Aveux les plus doux, Oublie-moi Mandoline, Le Vieil homme et l'enfant. The huge and lavish booklet has extensive notes by producer Alain Garel. Released shortly after the composer's death, this collection of soundtracks excerpts, never released before, was a kind of tribute from a label that was closely associated with Delerue for the two first decades of his career. The selected pieces consist mostly of pastiches from a large variety of genres, from the Baroque to the Silent movies. Enjoyable minor stuff, especially La Petite vertu, which is in its most complete form here. |
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Great
composers: Georges Delerue
Double set album Varèse Sarabande
6223 A compilation of nearly all the three nearly complete London Sessions albums (see the entry below) featuring material re-recorded at Abbey Road Studios, and excerpts from the original soundtracks of Crimes of the Heart, Man Trouble, A Little Romance, Rich in Love, Agnes of God and Black Robe. Quantity cannot replace quality. This compilation is not a representative and valuable sample of the composer's craft, except for the suite from the long out of print Crimes of the Heart original soundtrack. Nobody needed this reissue of the London Sessions, extented with just average excerpts from the Varèse Sarabande catalog of Delerue releases. The London Sessions recordings didn't help increase Delerue's popularity, the evidence being the total absence of new releases of his music in America from 1993 to 2002. Not even Varèse Sarabande has issued any new material, apart from a 12 minutes re-recording of one of his Amazing Stories scores. |
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Homme amoureux, Un (A Man in Love)
Canada CD Disques Cinémusique DCM 102 Original soundtrack from a 1987 French sentimental drama directed by Diane Kurys, starring Peter Coyote, Greta Scacchi and Claudia Cardinale. This highly melodic and representative Delerue score relies mainly on a large section of strings, the oboe, the harp and the flute. The producer of this CD is also the author of the present page. |
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L'homme de
Rio / Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine
France CD Universal Jazz 984-349-4 France CD Universal Jazz 984349-4 Original soundtracks from two comedies directed by Philippe de Broca in 1965 and 1963, starring respectively Jean-Paul Belomondo and Ursula Andress, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Françoise Dorléac. Chine Adventure doesn't rank among the most successful movies by Philippe de Broca, and the same remark applies to the music by his faithful contributor, Delerue. The oriental flavor of many pieces doesn't match well the usual orchestral palette, male chorus and waltz rhythms of the composer. There is a lot of '' Mickey Mouse '' effects that have no interest without the visual support. And adding to that the harsh monophonic sound... At least we can get a short vocal version of the beautiful Alexandrine theme. Regarding That Man From Rio, in addition to the three dramatic cues already present on the fist volume of the compilation '' Le Cinéma de Philippe de Broca '', three South American flavored pieces newly recorded by Alexandre Desplat can be found here, the original sessions master tapes being lost. They all sound like jazzy source music, devoid of distinctive signature and dramatic content. I don't remember if these pieces heard in the movie were so impersonal, but I doubt it. Desplat seems to have taken resolutely a '' Lounge '' approach, as shows his nearly five minutes version of the Alexandrina theme, offered as a bonus. Past a short and rather promising introduction played at the cello, the jazz-blues tendency takes on with a stereotyped arrangement that alters the melody while endowing it with an overrelaxed mood, close to improvisation. The program ends up with a composition by Alexandre Desplat himself for one of the latest movies by de Broca, Amazone, whose biggest merit is to fit exactly with what has preceded. To re-create the missing music in a more convincing manner, perhaps it would have been preferable to call on a former Delerue's contributor, like the pianist, orchestrator and also excellent composer Raymond Alessandrini. By the way, it's too bad that no film music of Alessandrini, notably for the movies by Jean-Charles Tacchella, has been issued recently in France, not even as a single album compilation. The booklet of That Man From Rio / Chinese Adventures contains an informative and moving testimony by Philippe de Broca, may be the last one he gave before his death. However, the text is printed in very small characters, as intended to discourage the reading. Obviously it is not a matter of space availability but instead a bad habit firmly rooted in many record companies, as the microscopic track listing in white on a pale color page. |
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Interlude / Rapture
Canada CD Disques Cinémusique DCM 115 Two Delerue scores are grouped on this new re-recording, produced by digitally sampling acoustic instruments: Rapture (1965), an art house movie directed by John Guillermin focused on the world of a teenaged girl played by Patricia Gozzi, and Interlude (1968), a drama directed by Kevin Billington, star¬ed Oskar Werner and Barbara Ferris. The recording of Rapture is a premiere in any disc format. As for Interlude, previously unreleased excerpts have been added to the 17 minutes initially released on LP. The approach taken by Robert Lafond remains very faithful to the original arrangements. The producer of this CD is also the author of the present page. |
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Joe Versus
the Volcano
U.S.A. CD SRS 2014 21 tracks - 48:21 - 2002 Original soundtrack from the 1990 comedy directed by John Patrick Shanley. Includes the concise score present in the film and all the other unused cues. The extensive liner notes by producer Robert Townson are adorned with nice stills of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks but an eyeglass is necessary to read the tracks listing. Original soundtrack from the 1990 comedy directed by John Patrick Shanley. Includes the complete score from the film and unused cues. Extensive liner notes by producer Robert Townson are adorned with nice stills of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, but an eyeglass is necessary to read the tracks listing. The decision not to edit the score and present it in chronological order does not favour the listener. Many tracks are too short to generate any real impact. Some of the more substantial cues, like the outstanding Storm and Rescue, are nearly spoiled by abrupt conclusions. At times, totally different music is linked to extend cues or, worse, mixed together, like the Hava Nagila tune over a threatening symphonic passage. The pop oriented tracks Shopping Spree and Fishing, both featuring a coarse saxophone, impair the value of the whole. The one-minute vocal rendition of the main theme, Marooned Without You, appears only in the End Credits in a sickly sweet arrangement. The sound quality ranges from excellent to - most commonly - unpleasant, especially for the huge, boosted strings section, which has excessive reverb in many places. All these irritants didn't prevent this long awaited soundtrack release for a cult-movie to be sold out within two years. |
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Jules et Jim
/ La Cloche tibétaine
Belgique CD Prometheus PCD-103 Original soundtrack in mono from the 1961 Truffaut drama starring Jeanne Moreau and Oskar Werner. Paired here with an original stereo soundtrack of a 1974 French TV series. Still the most complete release of the Jules et Jim soundtrack, presented here as a well sequenced suite. The song Le Tourbillon performed by Jeanne Moreau is missing, probably because it was actually composed by Bassiak, not Delerue. Too bad the sound quality leaves so much to be desired. La Cloche tibétaine is exactly the opposite: uninteresting musically despite overall good sound. |
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Little
Romance, A
U.S.A. CD Varèse VSD 5367 Original soundtrack from the George Roy Hill comedy. Consists mainly of a jazzy main title and (uncredited) adaptations from various Baroque works by Antonio Vivaldi, especially the Lute Concerto in D, RV 93, where the Largo movement is very similar to Delerue's Love Theme. Academy Award for Best Score Varèse Sarabande didn't feel it was necessary to reissue this soundtrack until the composer's death in 1992. Half of the score sounds like a temporary track, re-recorded with slight variations because the producers felt in love with Vivaldi's music. The other half is at best only average. All things considered, winning the Oscar with such a borrowing could only have been detrimental to Delerue's fame. The ugly artwork and unforgivable wrong track listing don't help matters. |
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London
Sessions Vol. 1, The
U.S.A. CD Varèse Sarabande VSD-5241 Newly recorded at Abbey Road Studios, excerpts from the scores Platoon, Rich and Famous, Her Alibi, Exposed, Biloxi Blues conducted by Delerue and Beaches conducted James Fitzpatrick. Also includes excerpts from the original soundtracks A Little Romance and Crimes of the Heart. A major disappointment, not so much because mostly minor scores were selected, but because the re-recorded material sounds like a self-caricature of the Delerue style, being played by a too large but still remoted orchestra. Odd packaging reinforces this impression. The only worthy inclusion here is the breezy eleven minute suite from the original soundtrack of Crimes of the Heart. |
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London
Sessions Vol. 2, The
U.S.A. CD Varèse Sarabande VSD-5245 Newly recorded excerpts from the scores Interlude, The Pick Up Artist, The Escape Artist, the Hommage à François Truffaut suite, Maxie conducted by Delerue and Steel Magnolias conducted by James Fitzpatrick. Also includes excerpts from the original soundtracks Salvador and An Almost Perfect Affair. Same weaknesses as with Volume 1. You have to go back to the original soundtracks from these movies and the original Steel Magnolias CD release on Polydor to really appreciate the scores. In some cases, like the Truffaut suite, the original orchestrations have not been respected, to the detriment of the music. In addition, the two excerpts from LP releases by Varèse Sarabande do not rank among the composer's best output. |
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London
Sessions Vol. 3, The
U.S.A.. CD Varèse Sarabande VSD-5256 Newly recorded excerpts from the scores House on Carroll Street, A Little Sex, Maid to Order, Memories of Me and Man, Woman and Child conducted by Delerue and Something Wicked This Way Comes conducted by James Fitzpatrick. Also includes excerpts from the original soundtracks Agnes of God and True Confessions. Same weaknesses as for Volume 1 and 2. This whole compilation exasperates me each time I give a try to it. Even the twelve minute suite from Something Wicked this Way Comes is less interesting than the rejected original sessions, which resurfaced as an abysmal bootleg. The inclusion of a suite from True Confessions, which was previously available in its entirety only on LP, remains the most valuable part, although it is too similar in style and spirit to Agnes of God to fit my taste. |
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Lonely
Passion of Judith Hearne, The |
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Man
Trouble
U.S.A. CD Varèse Sarabande VSD-5369 Original soundtrack from the Bob Rafelson comedy starring Jack Nicholson. Very few things really work in this score, one of the very last Delerue would pen. Apparently, he had to redo it three times at the request of the movie's producer. The best moments are reminiscent of some minor scores for Philippe de Broca's movies, but too thickly orchestrated. |
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Mépris,
Le - Nouvelle Vague
France CD Hortensia FMC-529 Original soundtracks from Le Mépris (1963), L'Ainé des Ferchaux (1962) and L'Insoumis (1964). Has also Juste avant la nuit by Pierre Jansen and Cléo de 5 à 7 by Michel Legrand. This early release remains precious because it contains the most complete CD version of the somber L'Insoumis and the blusy L'Aîné des Ferchaux. Le Mépris is nearly complete (see below). The two other soundtracks excerpts included, which are very different in style, also belong to the Nouvelle Vague period. |
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Mépris,
Le .
France Universal Jazz 013477-2 Original soundtracks from Le Mépris by Jean-Luc Godard and excerpts from other movies of the 60's : La Peau douce, L'Aîné des Ferchaux, L'insoumis, Cartouche, Cent-mille dollars au soleil, Compte à rebours, Heureux qui comme Ulysse. In 2001, this release merits special mention for offering more than the usual compilations devoted to the composer, including the first complete release (14 minutes) of the soundtrack to Le Mépris. However, a few selections are disappointing and the sound quality of some tracks (Cartouche, Heureux qui comme Ulysse) leave to be desired. |
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Music from
the Films of François Truffaut
U.S.A. CD Nonesuch 79405-2 Newly recorded excerpts by The London Sinfonietta conducted by Hugo Wolff from the following scores : Two English Girls, Jules and Jim, The Soft Skin, Such a Gorgeous Girl Like Me, Love at 20, The Woman Next Door, Shoot the Piano Player, Day for Night, The Last Metro. Also includes La valse de François T. Overall, the interpretation is good enough to match the original sessions. Judiciously selected, only a few tracks are disappointing, like the excerpts from Two English Girls and Brouillard from Jules and Jim, which is spoiled by an awkward reprise of the Vacances theme. Unfortunately, the CD suffers from weird sequencing. On a technical level, the audio normalization (sound level adjustment) sometimes appears to be deficient, resulting in too contrasting and brutal transitions. All things considered, this release remains recommended as long as you keep the CD player and amplifier remote controls close at hand. |
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Music of Georges Delerue for the films of Jack Clayton, The
Canada CD Disques Cinémusique DCM 117 This new recording has selections from five Delerue scores for movies by British director Jack Clayton between 1964 and 1992, arranged and performed by Robert Lafond with five adiditonal instrumentalists and a soprano singer : The Pumpkin Eater, Our Mother's House, Something Wicked this Way Comes, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and Memento Mori. Many of the selections are world premiere on disc. The 20-page booklet includes stills from the movies with extensive liner notes. The producer of this CD is also the author of the present page. Musiques de
films
France CD Fremeaux Entertainment FE960 CD Cinéfonia Records CFSAMP001 Besides the composer's name, Musiques de films is the only confusing mention on the cover of this release. Actually, it contains excerpts from four TV-series scores, from the late 60's to 1980 : Jacquou le Croquant, Les Chevaux du soleil, Le Chandelier, Le Jeune Homme vert . The two first have scarce good moments, while the two other are barely listenable. The bad quality recording doesn't help matters. The main theme from Jacquou, featuring the classical guitar, can be found on some Delerue compilations. Cinefonia Records has recently reissued the same content, entitled Les Notes de l'Écran - The best of french film music Vol.1 (sic). |
