[Tall Guy]

The Eiger Sanction may be my favourite John Williams score. I saw it on release, “borrowed” my dad’s work Dictaphone and went to see it again and recorded some of the music. On a machine intended for the spoken word rather than music, it recorded the main title rather reedily and with some flutter, but I played it endlessly until dad recorded a memo about sales of machine tools over it.

So getting the film tracks in the 2-disc set was wonderful, even if it was in much higher fidelity.

With a few exceptions, I’m happy with whatever type of release came first, although The Eiger Sanction, Midnight Cowboy, Kelly’s Heroes and some Morricones were really welcome.

Concert hall music is a different collar size altogether. I entertain several versions of my favourite Shostakovich works, because Haitink, Rostropovich, Nelsons, and particularly Rozhdestvensky have very different ideas of how the symphonies should be performed. Likewise, the piano reductions of the 4th and 15th, for instance, throw wonderful new light on the structures of the more richly orchestrated originals.