[Thor Joachim Haga]

What gets me riled up is something else: When people treat a re-recording of a film score as if it’s supposed to be a substitute for the original film performance. A new recording should be allowed to be its own thing, not an imitation of something that was. That is exactly why I find this recurring insistence for re-recordings to sound like the original film tracks totally misguided and misjudged. It is like asking Patrick Stewart to play Shakespeare like Laurence Olivier would have, instead of trying to do justice to the role rather than imitating someone else’s performance.

Agreed. I’ve seen that kind of behaviour too, on various forums, and it’s always struck me as odd.

I do sometimes SAMPLE other versions, just for curiousity’s sake (I did do to that with THE EIGER SANCTION, for example, as well as a great many other Williams scores), but it’s never happened that I’ve thought much about preferring it this or that way, or replacing stuff. Usually, whatever I got first (providing that is a good version), is the one I’ll be coming back to for the rest of my life.

There are of course cases where I’ve had to double dip, but not necessarily because of the music. For example, the sound quality of the original Perseverance release of RAIN MAN was abysmal, so I sold that off quickly. Then later came a much better-sounding version by Note for Note, I think it was. So I picked up that instead. But again, that’s more to do with production issues than any new performance of the music.