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ESSENTIAL NEW MUSIC

Essential New Music: Ennio Morricone’s “Morricone 60”

enniomorricone

Ennio Morricone’s new record deal with Decca, to curate and newly conduct and record selections drawn from the best of his lifetime output, was signed during the Italian composer’s 87th year. Morricone, one of the most prolific and gifted film scorers in the genre’s history, has a tremendous back catalog to plow through. And this first release, featuring the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, gathers selections from his most iconic scores, old and new, including The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly; The Mission; Once Upon A Time In The West; and The Hateful Eight. The melodies are thus familiar, and generally, though not always, hew to the original arrangements (the new instrumentation on “Theme from The Good, The Bad, And the Ugly” revitalizes even that culturally omnipresent tune). It’s the small touches here that matter, like the unbroken segues between music from different films that make the whole sound like a suite, and the crisp sonic clarity of these new recordings in general. A worthy career celebration of (and by) a true master.

—Eric Waggoner