The Magnificent Seven


Colosseum (4005939655921)
Varèse Sarabande (0030206655926)
Movie | Release date: 03/30/2004 | Film release: 1960 | Format: CD
 

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# Track   Duration
1.Main Title and Calvera3:58
2.Council3:13
3.Quest1:00
4.Strange Funeral / After the Brawl6:47
5.Vin’s Luck2:02
6.And then there were Two1:44
7.Fiesta1:09
8.Stalking1:18
9.Worst Shot2:59
10.The Journey4:37
11.Toro3:21
12.Training1:26
13.Calvera's Return2:36
14.Calvera routed1:49
15.Ambush3:09
16.Petra's Declaration2:28
17.Bernardo3:31
18.Surprise2:06
19.Defeat3:26
20.Crossroads4:46
21.Harry's Mistake2:48
22.Calvera killed3:33
23.Finale3:28
 67:13
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The Magnificent Seven - 10/10 - Review of Tom Daish, submitted at (English)
For some strange reason I never much saw myself as a person who actually liked western scores, preferring instead comedy pastiche versions (take Marc Shaiman's outrageously entertaining City Slickers 2 for a start). I don't know why this is, but when I actually got around to listening to some of the best scores the western genre offered, I was of course pretty much immediately converted. I may need some time adjusting to the harsher efforts of Jerry Goldsmith or Jerry Fielding, but the more glamourous efforts of Bernstein and Moross are immediately striking and joyously entertaining. Elmer Bernstein has never really been a composer to hide his light under a bushel and when he has the opportunity for exuberence he duly obliges everyone and charges forward with obvious delight and relish. This is confident music at its most memorable and inspiring, even the opening repeated, syncopated chords of the Main Titles don't hide anything and launch straight into Bernstein's ultra catchy and memorable main theme. It is a theme which is unlikely to require any introduction to anyone who doesn't live in caves in Taho (or perhaps Alderney) and brings to mind all that was manly, exciting and heroic about the wild west.
On occasion, there are scores which have the most catchy theme one could imagine, but listen to the rest of the score and the illusion of quality composing is shattered. Of course, the greatest composers don't rest the entire success of a score on one big theme and Bernstein is truly a great composer in every respect and duly obliges with a score filled with other memorable themes and plenty of energy and incident. The menacing, South of the Border tinged lick for bad guy Calvera is introduced immediately after the Main Title and plays in perfect counterpoint to the strident optimism of the opening couple of minutes. The Mexican bent to the music continues in several other places, but usually in a more cheerful vein than Calvera's motif. This is no more apparent than during the amusing Toreador and Training cues, but also with some quite lovely acoustic guitar twangs here and there.

Elmer Bernstein's contribution to my esteemed trilogy of most famous western scores (the other two of course being Morricone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Moross' Big Country) is of course every bit deserving of it's status. Where Moross picks up the expanse of the landscape and Morricone on the lonely stranger routine, Bernstein hints more at the Mexican angle of the old west with his kinetic syncopation and brassy orchestration. There are currently three different versions of the score (as far as I can tell), the two here as well as another re-recording, which I gather is pretty good. However, these versions offer the most complete releases to date.

The original recording features more music than the re-recording, but is in mono, although the sound is excellent and the performance abrasive and exciting. The re-recording was originally to be a Varese release, but for some reason ended up on BMG. The album has evidently been engineered slightly differently to usual Varese re-recordings and has a much less muddy sound and actually has the balance between crispness and reverb down just about right. The playing is exceptional, even by the typically high RSNO standards and Bernstein conducts the score with just as much enthusiasm as he didn some thirty seven years previous. Both are well worth getting as a perfect compliment to each other. An exceptional score by a great composer and deserving of a place (or two) in anyone's soundtrack catalogue.

Other releases of The Magnificent Seven (1960):

Magnificent Seven / Return of the Seven, The (1966)
Great Composers: Elmer Bernstein (1999)
Essential Hollywood, The (2006)
Magnificent Seven, The (2004)
Magnificent Seven, The (1998)
Il Etait Une Fois Dans L'Ouest... (1971)
Magnificent Seven, The (2015)
Magnificent Seven, The (2015)
Magnificent Seven, The (2017)
Magnificent Seven, The (2018)
Magnificent Seven, The (2020)
Magnificent Seven, The (2020)


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