Before we finally consign Christmas 2023 to history, a note that it had a James Horner theme for me. Some of my favourite Christmas memories (yes, how sad am I?) are from those years when one of the American soundtrack labels released their last big titles of the year (usually around Thanksgiving) and something grabbed my attention (which is, frankly, rare enough these days – my wallet whispers, just as well). Jaded as I often am about Christmas, it’s a particularly nice treat when discs I order manage to cross the Atlantic and arrive in the post in the last few days before the holiday, giving me something to listen to in the quiet periods during the usual festive chaos. In the past, its been La La Land’s Star Trek: TOS boxset, Quartet’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 3-disc set, or Varese’s Freud release… those are the ones that immediately spring to mind, anyway. This time around, it was two James Horner scores that, curiously, I’ve never previously owned.
Gorky Park dates back to 1983, the early days of James Horner’s success. Its not a film I’ve ever seen, strangely enough, and I’ve never really paid attention to the music, even though it dates back to the same year that Brainstorm (my first and favourite Horner score) was released. Its less the emotional, thoughtful side of Horner, and more the action-music side that I never entirely warmed to, which is partly why I never really paid much attention to the score before. Because of this it does now add a new colour to the palette of my Horner collection. That being said I’ve already come across a cue that easily rates as one of the most beautiful Horner pieces that I have heard- Irina’s Theme (Alternate Version), which is just sublime and contrasts hugely with the predominantly action flavour of the rest of the score.
Sneakers is a film I saw at the cinema and only again when I bought the Blu-ray recently (I say ‘recently’ but I guess it was a few years back- its horrific how time flies). Somehow the music never connected with me enough at the time compel me to buy the original album, which is strange, because it clearly ranks now as one of Horner’s best works. Certainly it marked a turning-point in his composing style, because while some of it harks back to earlier works like his Brainstorm‘s score, a lot of it indicates where Horner would be going in subsequent years, in his later scores such as Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind (both of which I did buy back then, so go figure). In fact, there is so much of his later work prefigured within this one, its almost as if this score was used as a frequent temp track for later films. At the time this would gradually become irritating even for a Horner fan such as myself, but since his passing, its become more of a nostalgic, positive thing, funnily enough.
the ghost of 82 