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Following the successful Gerry Anderson TV series releases,
Thunderbirds I
& II
and Captain
Scarlet
Silva Screen, in co-operation with Carlton TV, have released
music sourced from the first series of Space
1999.
The first recording session took place on 11 December 1973
with a 52-piece orchestra performing the opening and closing
titles music. For the series' incidental music, between 32
and 38 instruments were used at any one session, all conducted
by Barry Gray...
Barry
Gray's score for Space 1999 is probably the grandest
ever awarded to a TV show. It's lush orchestration and sweeping
richness helped give the programme much of its atmosphere
and unlike the previous Silva Screen collections for Thunderbirds
and Captain Scarlet, this aggregation of music isn't
a selection of short snippets. Rather, what this CD contains
are longer pieces, each developing a mood or feel over minutes
rather than seconds. This is all a long way from Supercar,
good though that work is.
There
are, however, two problems with this collection. First, it's
soon apparent that Barry didn't actually write as much for
Space 1999 as he had done for other shows (for contractual
reasons) and as a result library tracks were used on the series
to fill the gaps. And although these were often well chosen
- and nice to hear again - they seem slightly out of place
on the CD as they sometimes partition its feel.
The
second, and more pressing problem, is that Barry's work, although
wonderfully scored and arranged, uses a limited number of
themes and motifs which therefore robs this disc of the variety
of say the Thunderbrids collections. I'm sure that
allowed more time we would have seen Barry expand his musical
pallet for Space 1999 and it's therefore a little petty
to quibble with what is essentially an excellent CD but for
sheer enjoyment this isn't quite as good as Silva Screen's
previous collections of the great man's work.
It is, nonetheless, indispensable. Here's hoping for a Stingray
disc next...
Anthony Clark
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