Released by Film Score Monthly
Elmer Bernstein’s Film Music Collection
Liner Notes
From 1974 to 1979, composer Elmer Bernstein — a great believer in preserving the film music of the past — indulged an expensive whim: Re-recording excerpts from memorable scores by esteemed colleagues ranging from Alfred Newman (Wuthering Heights) and Miklos Rozsa (Madame Bovary) to Alex North (Viva Zapata!) and Bernard Herrmann (Torn Curtain). Nineteen scores spread over 14 LPs, manna from heaven for film-music lovers, collectively titled Elmer Bernstein’s Film Music Collection. I spent years scouring record stores searching for all of them. In 2006 FSM issued a 12-CD box set containing all but one (the modern one, Jerry Fielding’s Scorpio, now available elsewhere) along with a previously unreleased Bernstein re-recording of Kings of the Sun. I was proud to contribute the opening essay in the 136-page book that accompanies the discs.
