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When David Raksin recorded the 78 rpm suite from Amber he included a selection entitled "The Idyll at Chiverton Cottage." Can anyone identify the corresponding cue in the Varese recording of the original soundtrack?
I don´t have the 78 rpm record, but I know the film and therefore also that "Idyll at Chiverton Cottage" sequence which musically appears on the Varèse disc in track 4 where it is the cue "Ride". The entire film sequence in which Amber together with her lover Bruce Carlton (Cornel Wilde) goes to Chiverton Cottage so that he can see his son for the first time is underscored by Raksin. The Varèse contains this entire musical sequence and in track 4 it lasts from minute 3:15 to minute 8:34.
It could be that the track on the 78 rpm is somewhat shorter and maybe contains only the first 3 or 4 minutes of it, but at least the complete music which appears in that scene in the movie itself can be heard on the Varèse CD.
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Thanks Stefan –
I knew there was someone out there who could answer my question. Amber has been an off-and-on obsession for me for decades – both movie and score. What are your thoughts about either – or both?
For me FOREVER AMBER is one of the best and most underrated US scores of the 40s with such wonderful themes. It is such an intricate, richly textured composition by Raksin that it also makes for a great autonomous listening on LP or CD. I iimmediately fell in love with this music around 1980 when I had first heard the 25-minute suite that Raksin had recorded for the RCA album "David Raksin Conducts His Great Film Scores" in 1976 with the New Philhrmonia Orchestra. I was so surprised at that time about the power of the music which is simply irresistible.
It was much later - during the mid-80s - that I saw the movie for the first time on TV. I also like the film with its exquisite Technicolor photography, its beautiful sets and costumes, the sarcastic dialogues by George Sanders and the quite elegant and intelligent direction by Otto Preminger. Certainly the picture has some flaws and may be just a bit too long with more than 140 minutes, but I am nevertheless still quite fascinated by it.
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I had no idea the Varese CD was predated by a series of 78 shellac records. Fascinating.
I wonder if the complete score will ever be re-visited by one of the big Film Score Labels. Raksin is an almost criminally neglected talent. He wrote hundreds of scores but only about 15% of his total output is available on record.
The 78rpm set had only 6 tracks with probably about 20 minutes of music. These 20 minutes were then reissued at the end of the 70s on this Cinema bootleg LP (side A of this LP contained the DUEL IN THE SUN 78rpm set conducted by Arthur Fiedler):
https://www.discogs.com/de/release/3218954-The-Hollywood-Cinema-Orchestra-Duel-In-The-Sun-And-Forever-Amber
By that time however, Raksin´s new recording of the 25 minute FOREVER AMBER suite had already been released on the RCA LP album.
Unfortunately, Raksin doesn´t sell at all. And as we all know, the FOREVER AMBER CD was a commercial failure for Varèse when it got released in 1998. At a time when there were still much more Golden Age collectors around than nowadays. Who on earth in current times will therefore take the risk of issuing the complete score on probably two CDs? I don´t think it will ever happen.
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One of the intriguing aspects of both the released tracks and the Raksin re-recording is to hear the original finale as written and recorded.
If you watch the film, you may notice that the actual ending suffers from choppy editing. In the original version, Amber has lost her son, but is nevertheless coping with changes by preparing herself for a meeting with a minor court official who will probably become her next protector. The music reflects this characteristic resilience in the face of adversity. But censors at the time decreed that she had to suffer for her moral perfidy. Hence the cuts.
I wonder if any other sequences suffered from such intervention.
It is a marvelous score, Raksin’s best.
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One of the intriguing aspects of both the released tracks and the Raksin re-recording is to hear the original finale as written and recorded.
If you watch the film, you may notice that the actual ending suffers from choppy editing. In the original version, Amber has lost her son, but is nevertheless coping with changes by preparing herself for a meeting with a minor court official who will probably become her next protector. The music reflects this characteristic resilience in the face of adversity. But censors at the time decreed that she had to suffer for her moral perfidy. Hence the cuts.
I wonder if any other sequences suffered from such intervention.
It is a marvelous score, Raksin’s best.
Raksin, in his classes, used to show his personal print of the film. I wonder if it had the cuts in the ending, or had the full ending. (I can't remember myself.)
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