London Philharmonic Orchestra/Mauceri

The Genius Of Film Music

(LPO)

Here’s a real blast from the past. Who remembers John Mauceri, director of Scottish Opera in the 1980s, and the man responsible for bringing Leonard Bernstein to Glasgow to oversee the first production of the completed and definitive version of his opera-musical, Candide? Now that was a time to be here: talk about stardust. The avuncular and charismatic Mauceri has gone on to other things, not least holding a lifetime title with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Here he conducts the LPO in a double-CD of film classics, many of them his own arrangements of legendary film scores from the 1960s to the 1980s. It’s sumptuous, ultra-glam, widescreen stuff, opening with (what else?) the 20th Century Fox Fanfare, and including The Godfather, Psycho, Star Trek, Lawrence Of Arabia and much more, including the first recording of Alex North’s Cleopatra Symphony, commissioned by North’s widow. There’s a huge amount in it, it’s fabulous, and more of it anon.

Michael Tumelty