John Barry - The Collection - 40 Years of Film Music

March 31, 2008 | By Doug In Country |

John Barry - The Collection - 40 Years of Film Music
John Barry is one of the best represented film composers on CD, but this four-disc collection outdoes everything that’s come before with tracks from more than 50 film and TV projects. Of course there are the biggest names you’d expect. James Bond is acknowledged by 10 of the infamous themes and a couple of suites. There’s the Western romance of Dances with Wolves, the sultriness of Body Heat, the jazzy highs at The Cotton Club and the encapsulation of the 1960s by The Ipcress File. But this collection’s strength is in not just concentrating on well-known classics such as Born Free or The Lion in Winter. There’s also smaller fare that rarely gets heard, such as The Dove, High Road to China, The Deep and also his “Romance for Guitar and Orchestra” from Deadfall. After four hours of listening to Barry’s laid-back romantic style, you’ll be in no uncertainty that all those other collections were justified. It’s just a shame this didn’t come first. –Paul Tonks

Customer Review: An Amazing Collection of Movie Music
This was never intended to replace the actual movie soundtracks for which John Barry wrote the music. On the other hand, by creating an orchestrial arrangement, the CDs emphasise the extraordinarily high quality of the melodies Barry has written over the eyears, and are superb pieces of music in their own right. A truly remarkable and very large music collection.

Customer Review: What a disappointment!
When you think of film and television theme music, you think of the music which was actually played in the film or television programme, not a shallow copy of it like that on this compilation of John Barry’s superb music. The City of Prague Orchestra hasn’t just lost the plot, they don’t have a clue as to the DRIVE and breadth of sound which the theme music originally envisioned. The music is played well enough, but because it isn’t the ORIGINAL orchestra, or the original conductor, or even the original sound of the music, somehow the music seems shallow and completely lacking in feeling. I was VERY disappointed with this four-disc set and I don’t even bother playing the music. I can’t give the boxed set a rating of more than one star, and even then I feel I’m being generous.