"I think Max Steiner's score for KING KONG is the best music ever written for a fantasy film. Not only did it set a new standard for film scoring but it was way ahead of its time. Mr. Stromburg's recent recording of the music on compact disc is the best effort to produce a faithful sound track for the collector since the music was first heard in 1933. There are two unique things about Steiner's score for KING KONG: First, the score has excellant pacing and compliments the action of the film for which it plays at ALL times. Second, the music was written as a series of variations on a central theme; one that presents MANY opportunities to create dramatic enhancements to the action on the screen. The music not only says what the actors cannot, it appeals directly to the emotions of the viewer. The music reflects a broad range of dramatic utility, from fog-shrouded mystery, to brute physical power, to sweeping grandure, to panic-striken terror to genuine sadness. The whole Beauty and Beast premise of the film story is wonderfully wrapped in Steiner's music. For the first time, music had every bit as much dramatic appeal as the film. Perhaps the music's most important value lies in the fact that it will ALWAYS appeal. It is exciting to listen to again and again. May it endure forever. Thanks from a greatful fan to Mr. Steiner for his original work, to Producer Merian Cooper for "footing the bill" and to Mr. Stromburg for his faithful restoration."
Excellent soundtrack of old film.
gurumama | 11/03/1999
(4 out of 5 stars)
"I'm the type of fellow who knows original movie music when I hear it.Bought the cd some time ago,and was impressed how mr.Stiener's score was brought back to life courtesy of stromberg/moscow orchestra."
Absolute Genious!
Shadow | Springfield, VA, USA | 11/18/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is a suberb soundtrack, and I must say that I am blown away. From the music from the movie teaser, to the theme song, it is amazing. Such high quality, and so invigorating. Every time I hear the end of the song of the teaser, I get chills. No joke. Chills! That's how good it is. Though I'm only 16, I've been introduced to orchestral music and soundtracks thanks to the Halo 2 Soundtrack. But this is 5 times better. Highly recommended."
A Brilliant Accomplishment and Inspired Performance!
S. H. Towsley | Fort Wayne, IN & Los Angeles, CA | 04/17/1999
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This CD offers an absolutely unique and rare opportunity to hear the complete, accurately reproduced landmark KING KONG motion picture music score by Max Steiner, employing the exact same small number of musicians (from the Moscow Symphony Orchestra) to duplicate the size, sound and arrangement performed on the original magnetic track by RKO's cut-to-the-bone and overworked studio orchestra.
The CD also conveys a real sense of awe at the sheer inspiration and productivity involved in Max Steiner's lush and highly dramatic Wagnerian score for this ground-breaking motion picture -- a score which forever changed the way movie scores were conceived and perceived. Prior to KONG, music in the cinema had to issue from a source on screen -- a visible radio, or a band, or a star playing an instrument. Steiner's score began on a foggy Indian Ocean as a tramp steamer tries to find its way to an unmapped island. There's no instrument aboard ship more significant than a harmonica. This interpretation of cinema music was a revelation to KONG's premiere audiences, and they found this kind of score emotionally galvanizing.
There may well have been no better orchestra on earth than the Moscow Symphony to execute this project. Morgan describes, in the album notes, the musicians' tired, bruised hands after performing many of the really difficult passages in this work (and they are uncommonly challenging), and one gets the sense that the Moscow players put their hearts into it as well. When one hears the score so fully and accurately realized and richly presented by the same undersized number of musicians as Steiner had to work with, one cannot doubt that the artists love the score being performed.
John Morgan describes his production and conducting of this historically accurate music album as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and hearing the results, the listener knows precisely what he means by that.
You can pick out the abbreviated number of players in the amazingly full-sounding studio orchestra, you can easily overlay the memory of the actual KONG soundtrack in your mind and confirm that Morgan's orchestra is an accurate roll call of the instrumentation. You can confirm that this album covers the entire film score, without abridgments (on the contrary, there are small enhancements from sheet music he discovered and restored), and I think you will get a whole new understanding of the challenge undertaken and conquered by the original RKO orchestra -- when they originally played take after take of Max Steiner's frantic, complex, inspired and emotionally taxing score to accompany the entire last half of KING KONG's runtime, in some music production department on the 1932 RKO lot in Hollywood.
One really must read the fascinating liner notes and hear this CD performance in order to fully appreciate what has been accomplished here. I know I didn't fully expect to be this impressed. Never mind previous recordings of this score; they have their place as entertainment and are enjoyable in their own right, but...
The Marco Polo CD is a scholarly achievement of the first quality, and a must-have for anyone seriously interested in the KING KONG score -- even for many who don't believe they are interested.
Those most familiar with KING KONG-1933, as well as all those most in love with it, will be most astonished by Morgan's unexpected and welcome accomplishment here. And we owe the Moscow Symphony players our respectful gratitude for their artistic achievement as well."
King Kong , Score M. Steiner
Thomas J. Carpenter | Orlando Fl | 10/21/2004
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I have been a fan of Motion Picture film music for over fifty years.
Every time in the early fifty's, this feature was on TV I was there to watch it. When I became a motion picture projectionist , I had the pleasure of running this feature for more times, than I care to mention, I know every frame of this film, and the soundtrack. My point is that if the russkie's can duplicate the soundtrack music as perfect as they have here, (with some help from the american's)we are in a lot of trouble! This is the perfect musical reproduction of the motion picture soundtrack, (without the static) that I have ever had the pleasure to listen to. If you love motion picture music (and a fan of such, as I) pick this up now, someone will soon get wind of this, and you may end up paying, over two hundred dollar's for the cd. I had tears in my eye's, on track 4, chills on my arms I could see the action as the music played, do not pass this one up. T.C Orlando Florida"
Track Listings (22) - Disc #1
