Jerry Goldsmith breezes into the control room from Abbey Road's Studio One. 'Remember that Bruce?', he challenges his engineer. 'How long ago was it?' Botnick responds. 'Twenty-one years?' 'Don't, don't...' replies Goldsmith.
The closing crescendo from Star Trek the Motion Picture theme is still reverberating around the room, delivered by over 90 members of the London Symphony Orchestra and captured by no less than four cutting-edge recording systems crowding the machine room. There are smiles all round as the recording of a selection of Goldsmith's innumerable movie scores are captured for imminent release on the fledgling SACD format moves smoothly forward.

The exercise is intended to deliver a suitably impressive selection of Jerry Goldsmith movie scores to demonstrate the capability of the SACD format--one of the early converts is Goldsmith himself.
'It's a good cross-section of sound from the most bombastic to very delicate so it's a good test of the system,' he agrees of the session, 'but it's very scary actually. It's so accurate that you hold your breath when you listen to the playback. Most recordings, especially in a studio like this, sound ten times better in the control room than they do out here. With this system you can't conceal anything so everybody's got to be on their toes.

'To start with I expected it to be a bit like quadraphonic, but it's nothing like that at all. If you turn the rear speakers off you hear this tremendous absence. It's just general information, but it's all there. There's such depth in the sound and the dynamic range is so accurately recorded that it doesn't seem to crush your ears as it gets louder. I can't believe the sound.' Botnick is in agreement, readily describing it as 'transparent' and happy to be free from having to second-guess the performance of analogue tape. 'I've never liked digital recording quite frankly, but this sounds great,' Goldsmith enthuses.

In the meantime, Jerry Goldsmith and Bruce Botnick are happy that SACD is on course to dramatically improve the standard of both professional and consumer audio. And with that he returns to the conductor's podium and calls the orchestra to attention to rehearse the theme from The Russia House.

(Copyright Philips 2000)

One of the most exciting and intriguing Jerry Goldsmith CD's to ever be pressed. Not so much for the disc's actual content but how it was recorded and of course how it sounds. For this disc is the first compilation of film music to be specially recorded to demonstrate the amazing new SACD format from Philips and Sony. Jerry Goldsmith recorded a series of his most popular themes in January 2000, with the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios.

The disc was produced by Philips strictly for demonstration purposes and therefore has no commercial release but should ship with the new Players next year. If so it could prove to be the most expensive Jerry Goldsmith CD ever! Although capable of playing on a standard CD player, this CD is a hybrid disc and comes to life when heard on the appropriate hardware. Some have compared it to the transition from mono to stereo others see it as the ability to experience the atmosphere of a live recording. Ultimately SACD could be the future of how we listen to film music outside the confines of the movie theatre.

The Disc

The limited availability of this disc will know doubt frustrate Jerry Goldsmith collectors, but content wise there is nothing you haven't heard before. In fact if you have attended a Goldsmith concert then you will recognise all the arrangements from some of Goldsmith's most popular scores and themes.

The disc runs to 70 minutes and is made up of 24 tracks. Note a slight mistake has been made where track 2 and 11 are nothing more than the openings to the Sand Pebbles and the Man From U.N.C.L.E respectively.

1. Star Trek The Motion Picture
2. Motion Picture Medley (Sand Pebbles intro)
3. The Sand Pebbles
4. Chinatown
5. Air Force One
6. A Patch Of Blue
7. Poltergeist
8. Papillon
9. Basic Instinct
10. The Wind & The Lion
11. Medley of television themes (U.N.C.L.E intro)
12. The Man From U.N.C.L.E
13. Doctor Kildare
14. Room 222
15. Star Trek Voyager
16. The Waltons
17. Barnaby Jones
18. The Boys From Brazil
19. Twilight Zone The Movie (Overture)
20. Theme From Rudy
21. Theme From Sleeping With The Enemy
22. Theme From The Russia House
23. Love Theme From Forever Young
24. The Generals - MacArthur & Patton

Arrangements

As I said these are the arrangements that Goldsmith concert goers are familiar with. The performance from the LSO and the arrangements in standard CD mode come across quite restrained. But it's when you move to SACD that the full impact of this recording comes through. Along the way there are some nice touches to familiar arrangements, Man From U.N.C.L.E and Twilight Zone The Movie in particular, but it's the Multi Channel aspects of this recording that make this disc so exciting.

Packaging & Credits

Being a demonstrator, not surprisingly, packaging is kept to the minimum with track titles and one stock photo of Goldsmith conducting.

Music Composed And Conducted By Jerry Goldsmith

Performed By The London Symphony Orchestra

Recorded at Abbey Road Studios - January 19-21 2000

Producer Hein Dekker

Balance Engineer Bruce Botnick

70 minutes, 24 Tracks