I could not find a thread devoted to the two albums of Leonard Rosenman's scores for the James Dean films "East of Eden" and "Rebel Without a Cause," so here it is.
One came out on a mono Columbia LP, conducted by Ray Heindorf, and was subsequently released on CD.
Tbe other is a digital stereo recording from the 1990s, with John Adams conducting.
Has anyone carefully compared the two? The content is similar. Each has a few titles not available on the other. The John Adams CD has more music overall. Some have similar titles. The timings don't always jibe, and the differences in some cases suggest content differences as opposed to tempos.
I'm planning a careful comparison soon, but I was wondering if anyone else has.
I'm not going to be much use, Onya, because I haven't heard the Heindorf - are those the original soundtracks? I must say though, that I find the John Adams recordings to be excellent. Rosenman is notoriously difficult to get "right" in re-recordings - the William Motzing compilation, for example, is a laudable attempt but sounds bloated and heavy, very unlike the spikily intense originals - so I'm giving top marks to the Adams.
Thanks. I already have both. I like both for different reasons. There is something about the sound of those Hollywood orchestras, conducted by Heindorf, that is hard to reproduce.
My question has more to do with subtle or obvious differences between the two albums.
The Motzing is the most complete one. Performance-wise the Heindorf (original!) and Adams are the preferred versions for me. Rosenman also recorded a James Dean tribute LP that is available on some public domain CDs. I wish some kind label would FINALLY issue the complete recordings from these movies. Here we have three movies which are among the most important in all movie history - and the soundtrack recordings keep sitting unheard in some vault
