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Wojciech Kilar's Dracula (1992) - 3CD Expanded Edition from La-La Land Records (2018)


Jay

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9 hours ago, Josh500 said:

 

Say, that's a nice b-- pic! 

 

How much did Samsung pay you for that plug? :P

 

 

Apparently the check got lost.

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On 11/23/2018 at 2:48 PM, Marian Schedenig said:

A friend saw this up at LLL briefly yesterday, but when he refreshed it was gone again. Imagine if that had happened with Potter!
 

Anyway, this should be interesting. I don't know the story behind how the score was written, but the album seems very much like an extensive edit of the music as written, and the film itself also mostly seems to use the same pieces over and over again in a Leone fashion. If there's an actual "intended score", there could be quite a bit of new stuff there. Also the chase music is missing on the CD, and I'm sure the dry sound can be improved.

 

I can't wait to read Tim Greiving's (aka @Maestro) liner notes about it. In the DVD audio commentary, Coppola said that Kilar wrote the score using the script, concept art and some footage as a reference. He didn't write to picture. He wrote a set of themes with several variations, which were recorded as "pure" music and then he let Coppola and the editors use them as they wanted during the editing and mixing.

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There is also an amusing anecdote in the liner notes about How Coppola Called Kilar on the phone and asked if He [Kilar ]would score the movie for him.To which Kilar responded' "Well that's an offer I cant refuse!  ':biglaugh:

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I'm most curious to find out how this one plays in such a massively expanded form. I imagine it will be quite repetitive knowing Kilar's methodology. But there's plenty to work with if I want to create my own playlist. I never liked the original album.

 

Karol

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They just announced the programme for next year's Krakow FMF festival and one of the concert will be the live to projection performance of this score conducted by... Don Davis? I'm actually quite interested in that (as well as Desplat concert and few other things too)

 

Karol

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just played this last night. Only played the film program as of yet (will get to the remainder cues later tonight)  The sound quality is stunning. The playback was just wonderful. This may be one of the most satisfying 3CD expanded set in some time. The producers made wise choice of following Kilar's original intention in programming the score as he intended-It makes it so much better. Some wonderful nugets through out the programme. At last  its really great to have the sunset chase music ! 

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  • 2 months later...

So, after a while has passed... 

If I love the OST, like the film, and enjoy the samples, is this worth the investment? Is it repetitive, overkill, does it add much interesting material to the OST? There's something about it that makes me more reserved, it doesn't feel in the same category as Conan, Schindler and Supes which I just had to buy expansions of instantly.

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There is some material that we've never heard before. But you get it for sound to to make your own personalised version. The complete score, while listenable, is probably bit too repetitive. I was never a fan of the OST. It sounded rubbish.

 

Karol

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The OST was an odd edit of the score. And regardless of whether you want more music, or want the music on the album presented in a better fashion, or neither, the much improved sound quality on the new release is definitely worth it.

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  • 9 months later...
  • 1 month later...

Haven't lived up to my chosen title lately, so...

 

20200316_123438.jpg

Goldwasser, you've been doing this for a living for years and you still don't know jewel cases have a massive viewruining blob in the middle? How come Titus can choose art well or frame it appropriately?

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  • 1 month later...

This just arrived in the post from Intrada. Apologies if this is addressed in the liner notes but I had a few questions about the 'Bonus Album Tracks' at the end of disc 3. I'm assuming these were all made for potential inclusion in the original album but they didn't make the cut? Do we know where they would have been placed within the original album? I'm assuming the extended 'Mina/Dracula' and 'The Hunt Builds' replace the same cues but do we know where the other 3 would have gone? If not does anyone who has the set have any suggestions for where to put them in a playlist with the original album?

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54 minutes ago, Holko said:

This is how my edit ended up, 110:40, lots of combinations or order shifts or using "album versions" or those "unused album suite" stuff, like Mina/Jonathan, Rules Café, or Toolbox 21 as the "credits piece". The final track as usual is just "alternate" material that didn't fit elsewhere but I still liked, combined. I went a bit batshit with The Storm and Race Against the Sunset, combining versions and looping and layering a bit.

image.png

lol

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1 hour ago, Holko said:

This is pretty much a truly European style score (not written to picture, only some cues writen for specific scenes like The Beginning, The Storm, Race Against the Sunset, and a whole bunch of variations on different material to use wherever) that the producers tried their hardest to disguise as a palatable Western-style score with intended film program, alternates, OST, and album bonus tracks. And they didn't do a bad job with it at all. With the lack of documentation, for all we know, those 5 extra tracks were totally intended for use by Kilar, and were placed on Disc 3 only because they are the most developed and refined or most different pieces. Actually I'm not sure Kilar had much involvement in the OST with all those iso score cutouts with the crappy overediting and everything... but it also has unique variations not present elsewhere on the set like Vampire Hunters.

 

This is how my edit ended up, 110:40, lots of combinations or order shifts or using "album versions" or those "unused album suite" stuff, like Mina/Jonathan, Rules Café, or Toolbox 21 as the "credits piece". The final track as usual is just "alternate" material that didn't fit elsewhere but I still liked, combined. I went a bit batshit with The Storm and Race Against the Sunset, combining versions and looping and layering a bit.

Thanks Holko, that's super useful.

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Actually, here's some further interesting info, quickly transcribed from Coppola's commentary track:

 

Quote

What he wrote was very, very effective and in fact really has weathered time very well, and for years I would see trailers of movies coming out that had just used hi smusic for Dracula in the trailer... What I would notice is that he wrote about 3 or at the most 4 cues ...I think it was 3, a love theme, a kind of initial, very dramatic theme, and the a third theme, and he gave me these 3 themes, and we recorded them, and uhh, that was all he gave me, and we had a whole movie that we had to score, and we had these 3 themes, and I said, well, can you give me some variations, for example could we play the love theme this way and that way, this orchestration, that orchestration, and he tried and tried and tried, but ultimately when it was all said and done, he wrote those 3 cues, they sounded great, and he was giving it to me, and that was it. So when we actually finished the complete movie, we found that we had to take these 3 cues and fortunately we had the original recordings, which were recorded with a number of microphones, so we could play the cue and, you know, not play the string section, or not play the brass section, or the music editor had to find ways that we could make these 3 very very impressive cues work for the whole movie without just repeating them over and over again, and that was an interesting experience, very very positive and yet somewhat troublesome, with like, a really classical musician-composer, I guess it comes down to, that, you know, every minute of music is a result of a lot of hard work, weeks and weeks of hard work, and you just don't have, you know, 12 cues and do it this way and do it that way and have enough for a whole movie.

(the 1 minute at the end probably referring back to the story of Coppola wanting Lutosławski, who answered something along the lines of "young man, do you know how many hours it takes me to write a minute of music?")

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  • 8 months later...

I'm listening to this release now, which is actually my first time listening to this score in any format (other than when I saw the film in the 90s)

 

I started with those final 5 extended/unused album suite tracks at the end of disc 3, and they didn't do much for me.

 

However, now I've started the main program, and disc 1 track 1 is awesome!  Looking forward to going through the entire release

 

This score has a lot of fans on JWFan, right?  Is everybody happy with this expansion?

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5 minutes ago, Jay said:

This score has a lot of fans on JWFan, right?  Is everybody happy with this expansion?

It needs a little love to be the perfect personalised program, but the set provides the elements for that very generously.

 

 

I love the disc 3 bonus suites! Mina/Jonathan and D21 especially!!!

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I don't this composer very well, but I listed what I want to collect from him, to learn more about his music:

 

  • Bram Stoker's Dracula (OST done, I wait for the Expanded release to be reissued)
  • The Ninth Gate (still on my wishlist)
  • The Pianist (done, well, relevant for just one track finally! But I love Chopin too)

 

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Tamper your expectations for the score assembly, it's a bunch of different or not very different variations not recorded to picture that got used wherever they saw fit in the movie, hacked up, looped, layered, speed-shifted, anything you can imagine, and this attempts to place the clean originals in rough film use order. There are definite repetitions and sometimes a general feel of structurelessness. The 3 or 4 main big Love Theme statement cues for example all follow the exact same shape since they were just a bunch of differently orchestrated recordings of the same thing. The best thing about the set is getting hooked on the atmosphere and some motifs and digging real deep into it and crafting your own favourite program out of all the bits.

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50 minutes ago, Jay said:

This score has a lot of fans on JWFan, right?  Is everybody happy with this expansion?

 

I'm sure Bruce isn't. It's got all the things he dislikes.

 

I think it's about as good a release of this very peculiar score as there can be. As has been said, it's very repetitive, and many bits and pieces were written to be swapped in and out as required by the editors. Still, I think the main programme of the current release makes for a decent listening experience - and after the all, the OST was also repetitive (yet left out at least one of the most memorable bits) and had some very odd editing/crossfading things going on. Karol described the character of the release and the toolboxiness of the bonus tracks very well in his original review, as I recall.

 

45 minutes ago, Jay said:

Maybe I'll have a new appreciation for them when I get back to them again in a few hours!

 

If you like Dracula, I don't see why you wouldn't like The Ninth Gate. It's very similar in character, but has more full length variations and is, I think, overall more fun.

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4 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

If you like Dracula, I don't see why you wouldn't like The Ninth Gate. It's very similar in character, but has more full length variations and is, I think, overall more fun.

 

I feel the opposite about these two scores.

 

5 minutes ago, Corellian2019 said:

Off-topic, but The Pianist deserves a proper release, beyond just ONE track of Kilar's material on the OST

 

It's an utter catastrophe it hasn't happened yet!

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The only reason why I gave this score a listen at the time was that I liked the song of Annie Lennox. And I was terribly bored by the music. Was much too simple to be interesting. Too little going in in the music. Not for me.

If you ask me about details I cannot tell. I hardly remember it.

But I think, in the film it was quite ok.

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4 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

The only reason why I gave this score a listen at the time was that I liked the song of Annie Lennox. And I was terribly bored by the music. Was much too simple to be interesting. Too little going in in the music. Not for me.

 

Try having it on in the background an evening.

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Finished the main program.  It was a bit repetitive, yea, but nothing too bad.  Plenty of interesting ideas throughout, if a bit choppily presented.

 

Onto the bonus tracks!

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I listened to this a lot back in the 90s, but it's been a long time now (and I obviously have zero interest in the expansion). Some of the intense, minimalistic music tends to go on my nerves, but there are some gorgeous, darkly delicious stretches too. Love the march for Van Helsing. I liked the more romantic approach to the Dracula myth, and I think the film is a masterpiece.

 

But compared to THE NINTH GATE, which was brought up earlier, I prefer that more. That beautiful "Vocalise" is to die for.

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The terribly layered out of tempo film stem tracks are.

1 minute ago, Jurassic Shark said:

The OST ain't bad either.

 

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5 minutes ago, Holko said:

The terribly layered out of tempo film stem tracks are.

 

 

Yeah, I was mostly thinking about the repetition - it's not something that annoys me on the OST.

 

6 minutes ago, Thor said:

But compared to THE NINTH GATE, which was brought up earlier, I prefer that more. That beautiful "Vocalise" is to die for.

 

I find that melody way too predictable.

 

6 minutes ago, Thor said:

I listened to this a lot back in the 90s, but it's been a long time now (and I obviously have zero interest in the expansion).

 

But have you heard the expansion? PM me if you haven't. :)

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5 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

I find that melody way too predictable.

 

Predictable? I'm not sure what that means. It's a lushly dark composition that perfectly mirrors the 'allure'/femme fatale in the film.

 

Quote

But have you heard the expansion? PM me if you haven't. :)

 

I've sampled it, yes.

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6 minutes ago, Thor said:

Predictable? I'm not sure what that means. It's a lushly dark composition that perfectly mirrors the 'allure' in the film.

 

It means that when hearing it for the first time, you mostly know where the melody is going. And that's kind of boring to me.

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