Out of Africa
Label: Varèse Sarabande
Catalogue No: VSD 5816
Release Date: 1997
Total Duration: 38:40
UPN: 4005939581626
At first one wonders why we need a new recording of OUT OF AFRICA. True, it is one of the great masterpieces of contemporary film music, a phenomenon far ahead of its film. It is a wonderfully lyrical and romantic score whose majestic themes and colorful orchestral moods make it a champion of romantic film scores for all time.
But it is not as if John Barry’s own authorative recording is rare or unavailable, nor is it like so many other Barry albums, slight compared to the score content of the film. In fact, OUT OF AFRICA is one of the most widely pressed John Barry albums. To this end I wish Varese had tackled Barry’s overlooked masterpiece THE LAST VALLEY, or his utterly lush WALKABOUT. Even if the commercial mandates are unavoidable, then DANCES WITH WOLVES at least offers a whole album’s worth of rich, previously unreleased music to choose from.
But OUT OF AFRICA is what we have, and if it wasn’t necessary that doesn’t overshadow the magnificence of the score, which is perhaps Barry’s latter day WALKABOUT. As it happens Joel McNeely’s recording is everything that John Barry’s is – inevitably there are discernible differences to which purists like myself will point to Barry’s original as the definitive, and McNeely chooses interpretation rather than carbon copy at a few points (his “Karen’s Journey” is softer than Barry’s heavier rendition and his “Flight Over Africa” lays on a more distinctly choral, ethereal mood).
But whilst not all the score is puritanically the same, most of it is uncannily authentic. Unlike the weak Nic Raine recordings for Silva’s Classic series, you could believe John Barry is at the podium; McNeely remarkably reproduces the exact sheen and depth of the original sound, and his few moments of interpretive licence are perhaps not better, but are certainly not worse than the originals. Just different, different in a way that offers alternative rather than inferior enjoyment of this, one of the last words in truly great film scoring.
Stephen Woolston – Originally published in Soundtrack Magazine Vol.16 / No.64 / 1997
