Veröffentlichung (USA) - Kritzerland: The Whisperers (Barry) & Equus (Bennett)

[Gast Stefan Jania]

Kritzerland is proud to present a limited edition soundtrack release two great scores on one great CD:

The Whisperers

Music Composed and Conducted by John Barry

Equus

Music Composed by Richard Rodney Bennett

Bryan Forbes 1967 film of The Whisperers is, sadly, barely remembered today. But it contains one of the finest performances ever committed to celluloid Dame Edith Evans, who, at the time, was seventy-nine years of age. As the New York Daily News said, Heres not merely the performance of the year, it is one of the few truly great performances by an actress in film history. Evans performance of an elderly, lonely woman with a fantasy life, who hears voices (the whisperers of the title), lives in seedy squalor, and who barely can exist on what she receives from the National Assistance, is so haunting and touching and magical the emotions that play across her face at any given moment for any given reason, the way she carries herself and cocks her head and asks Are you there? well, its simply not possible to offer enough praise .

The film itself is bleak and downbeat, and it didnt catch on with audiences (it was a very strong year for film, with The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Whos Coming To Dinner, Wait Until Dark, Cool Hand Luke, The Dirty Dozen and more), but was a hit with critics. Apparently enough Academy voters saw it, because Evans received a Best Actress nomination. She was in very good company Audrey Hepburn, Katherine Hepburn, Anne Bancroft, and Faye Dunaway but the award went to Katherine Hepburn. Evans did win the Silver Bear at the Berlin Festival as well as a Golden Globe and BAFTA award.

For the score, Forbes used John Barry theyd already done several pictures together, including Séance On A Wet Afternoon, King Rat, and The Wrong Box. By 1967, Barry had already become a legend, thanks to his iconic scores for the James Bond films. Whatever alchemy sometimes happens between director, composer, and subject matter, happened repeatedly with Forbes and Barry and Barrys score for The Whisperers is not only one of his best, but a perfect marriage of film and music.

I AM YOURS AND YOU ARE MINE

Peter Shaffers 1973 play Equus was a sensation from the minute the curtain went up on its original production at the Royal National Theatre at the Old Vic in London. Shaffer based his play on an incident hed heard about involving a seventeen-year-old whod blinded six horses. Instead of reading about the actual incident, Shaffer concocted his own tale about what might have caused the young man to do such a thing. It was compelling theater, and filled with Shaffers incredible wordplay, anguished characters, and innate theatricality. The play mesmerized audiences it had a very long run in London, and ran for 1209 performances on Broadway. It has been revived many times since, most recently starring Richard Griffiths and Daniel Radcliffe.

For the 1977 film, Sidney Lumet was engaged to direct, with Shaffer adapting the play for the screen. Richard Burton, whod played the role of psychiatrist Martin Dysart for a brief time on Broadway, starred, alongside the original Alan Strang, Peter Firth. The film version had a fantastic supporting cast, including Colin Blakely as Alan Strangs father (Blakely also played Dysart during the original London run), Joan Plowright, Harry Andrews, Eileen Atkins, and Jenny Agutter. Burton, Firth, and Shaffer all received well-deserved Oscar nominations.

To score the film, Lumet turned to Richard Rodney Bennett, with whom hed worked on Murder On The Orient Express. Bennett, born in 1936, began scoring films in 1957, and had already become an amazing film composer, turning in wonderful scores for films in just about every genre Far From The Madding Crowd, Billy Liar, The Wrong Arm Of The Law, The Mark, The Nanny, Billion Dollar Brain, Secret Ceremony, Nicholas and Alexandra, Lady Caroline Lamb and many others.

Bennett wrote a sparse but extremely effective score, using a very unusual orchestration for an ensemble of lower string instruments ten violas, eight cellos, and six basses. Bennetts ravishing underscore compliments Lumets visuals and Shaffers dialogue perfectly.

The Whisperers was originally issued on a United Artists LP and had a prior CD release on Ryko. That release, as was the case with several Ryko issues, had dialogue tracks added between the score tracks, which, for most people, completely interrupted the wonderful flow of Barrys original LP sequence. For this release, we have removed the added dialogue tracks and remastered the sound.

The original United Artists LP of Equus, along with its prior CD release (also on Ryko now long out of print), interspersed five of Burtons monologues (and a scene with Firth) among the score cues. Some of the monologues retained their own track and had no underscore, and some were bookended with musical cues. The result was a very nice listen for the first couple of times after that, one wished that the score could simply be listened to as a score, on its own. So, for this release, weve done exactly that for the first time. We present Bennetts score first, and then the six dialogue tracks a couple of which have underscore repeated from the score tracks. Listening to the score on its own is a fantastic experience and since the prior CD preserved the original sequence of the LP, we felt justified in presenting this in a new light. As with The Whisperers, we have also remastered the sound.

This release is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98 plus shipping.

CD will ship by the end of November however, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (weve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

[Alexander Grodzinski]

Den Barry habe ich noch nicht, der wird also in meine Sammlung wandern.