Different versions of the same work?
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This was actually a thread I did on JWFAN, on November 24, 2023:
Many people like to own multiple versions of the same work (doesn’t matter if it’s film music, classical or whatever). I’ve never really had that inclination. Sure, I’ve been known to check out different versions of the same score, sometimes even own a couple. Especially if they’re radically different, like jazz takes on orchestral music. For example, I have both a traditional take on Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” as well as Richter’s “Vivaldi Recomposed”. But most of the time — when I’ve found ONE version I’m pleased with — I stick with that if I want to experience THAT particular work.
What’s your take on this?
I like cover versions of themes that provide different arrangments that like a jazz or groovy arrangments (I have loads of those). But otherwise I am not really into having several versions of the same work especially regarding classical works. I know it makes a difference which orchestra, conductor, soloist but I am a bot ignorant of that. There is so much that I rather explore other works before listening to dozens versions of the same.
Of course I have re-recordings of film scores where I have the “original” already. Well, exceptions confirm the rule 😉
On the other hand, I much rather listen to the 145th version of the Goldberg variations (it’s hyperbole, obviously, I neither own nor have listened to 145 versions… but quite a few) before I listen to something completely “new”, unless I have good reason to try that “new”. I like the nuances, in fact, I like to re-encounter great music I love over encountering new music I may not like as much. I want music to be alive and never sound the same. So I’d rather have great music made new than new music made for one consumption. For me, it may be like returning to a favorite dish in your favorite restaurant by a spectacular chef, that engulfs you in taste even though it never tastes exactly the same but always spectacular, over trying new kinds of fast food, which all may taste very differently, but all rather bland in comparison. In the same way the slightest variation of a single spice can make a huge difference in how a dish can taste, so can a great performance by a great musician can make an all too familiar piece of music sound anew, and that effect is often deeper and startling, moving, than to hear a piece of music that you haven’t heard before, but which doesn’t reach such heights.
And there’s something else that happens when you go deep like that: you start to understand the piece in a way one single recording simply cannot teach you. Each interpretation is like a different light source falling on the same sculpture. You didn’t see that shadow before. You didn’t notice that contour. Owning (or listening to ) many recordings of the same work isn’t redundancy, it’s archaeology, it’s study, it’s contemplation. It’s like reading different translations of the same book each may reveal things you did not get the first time.
Because can Bach really be contained by one performance? Seriously? The Goldberg Variations? You will only have one? Come on! Can Beethoven? That’s like saying a life can be summed up by a single action. These compositions don’t have one “correct” version waiting to be found and listened to, they are an infinite interior to be discovered, and every great performer is just mapping a different corridor of it. The piece is bigger than any one reading of it, and the more readings you collect, the closer you get to grasping how vast it actually is. That’s my two cents of it. That doesn’t mean I buy any more recordings of the Goldberg variations soon, I’ve got enough as is… but IF one comes along that strikes my fancy… well, if I have to wager that against some unknown film score by an unknown composer, I probably take the new version of the Goldberg Variations.
I will perfectly concede though that I don’t need a dozen recordings of most film scores, even the great ones, not all music is destined to be recorded uncounted times. I like having three versions of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA or PATTON or VERTIGO, I don’t need ten, that’s perfectly clear. But I don’t mind two versions of JAWS or BEN HUR.
It should also be noted that having multiple recordings of the same work (which is not unusual in classical music collections) is of course a luxury that comes with time. When I started to collect music, I avoided doubling up on recordings; I mean, I had limited financial funds, and there was so much music out there… not much point in getting multiple copies of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony if you don’t even have the others yet.
But nowadays… it’s like in the thread “How Complete is your Music Collection“, I have pretty much (with perhaps very few exceptions) all the film scores I ever wanted, and all the classical recordings I strived to have in my younger years…
So while I still discover new music, I find I have still much to discover in the works I have, and listen to various version of it. For example, I love Bach’s “Well Tempered Clavier”, and I love listening to different versions of it, I’m wowed by how different the very same music can make you think and feel when interpreters as varied as Daniel Barenboim, Keith Jarrett, and Angela Hewitt (just three examples of the recordings I have) perform it.I never understood the obsession of many soundtrack fans with the original film recording. I’d be always more interested in later rerecordings of scores, especially due to the distance of the recording to the original picture which makes it for me more a musical work of its own.
I also rather listen to the McNeely rerecording of Jaws than to the original film recording, not even speaking of modern rerecordings of scores from the 40s and 50s.I have still much to discover in the works I have
Yes, for sure, even applies without having different versions! Especially since it can take years to re-listen to a work especially with larger collections as we all have.
Just let me specify that I think the artform of interpreting (and re-interpreting) a work is most definitely legitimate and appreciated. Different film versions and readings of a book, for example. I will never make an argument against re-interpreting works. That would be silly.
It’s just that – on a personal level – I’ve never really had the need for more than ONE version, IF and only IF that version is a good one. If I want to experience a given work, I’m content with ONE version I’m pleased with. I mean, I’m sure I have several versions of Beethoven’s 9th symphony – since Nick brought that up – scattered across my collection, but if I’m in the mood for that particular work, I’ll probably just go for the Karajan/Berlin Phil/DG CD I have, from 1977. That will satisfy my need for Beethoven’s ninth at any point in time.
I never understood the obsession of many soundtrack fans with the original film recording.
Me neither. For scores older than a certain date, I will almost always prefer re-recordings.
I mean, I’m sure I have several versions of Beethoven’s 9th symphony – since Nick brought that up – scattered across my collection, but if I’m in the mood for that particular work, I’ll probably just go for the Karajan/Berlin Phil/DG CD I have, from 1977.
That’s a good one. Ironically, I have even that particular recording in my collection twice. 🙂
Me neither. For scores older than a certain date, I will almost always prefer re-recordings.
Yes, me too. While I don’t mind mono recordings in general especially Golden Age scores can only really shine with a modern re-recording.
I never understood the obsession of many soundtrack fans with the original film recording. I’d be always more interested in later rerecordings of scores, especially due to the distance of the recording to the original picture which makes it for me more a musical work of its own.
I also rather listen to the McNeely rerecording of Jaws than to the original film recording, not even speaking of modern rerecordings of scores from the 40s and 50s.Well, I definitely understand it to a point, regardless of whether I share it. I mean, there are just some performances you love. I have often heard a performance of a piece of music and wanted that particular performance, not another performance. If I fell in love with Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas”, I want that version, not Frank Sinatra, no matter how good that one is. Same with film performances, I perfectly understand why someone would want a particular performance. And especially film performances which you may have heard countless times in context of the movie.
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.
If what you want is the film recording, then what you want is the film recording. Nothing wrong with that. But a new recording will never be that, and trying to force it into that mold is a recipe for disappointment. And well, obviously, these are the folks who are disappointed then.
A short anecdote from the life of a film score collector:
I remember years ago, in the 1980s, a film came on TV. I was Saturday evening, I had a friend over, we were just about to go out, the opening credits started and I thought: “hey, that’s great music… let me watch the credits”.. we did, and then watched the entire movie. The movie was THE EIGER SANCTION, and the score was by John Williams of course. A decade later or so, sometime in the late 1990s, I picked up the Varèse Sarabande release of that music… ah, there it was again. Sounded great, good album. No quarrels. I wasn’t even aware it was a re-recording.When Intrada eventually released the 2CD set, I got that too, and when I heard the film recording, I thought it was more interesting than the soundtrack recording. The film tracks are a bit edgier, the opening credit music takes some more interesting turns. So that was a pleasant surprise. I didn’t know there was such a difference between the tracks of the album and film recording. Had I known, I would have preferred the film tracks over the album recording. Again, not because the album recording is bad, I still like that album, but if I can have only one: the film recording is better. But even better: I have both, and I listen to both… perhaps in turns. 🙂
I have re-watched the movie since some time ago. So yeah, I can understand if someone says “Hey, I got THE EIGER SANCTION album, but I want the film tracks”.
But as I said, I view a new recording always as its own thing. And yes, I love McNeely’s JAWS, it’s great, it is a terrific recording, and it stands on its own legs. But it is not the film performance, and it does not need to be. I can understand people who say “hey, I want/prefer that film recording”, I’m just irked by people who complain that McNeely’s recording is not just that.
If you want the film recording, you have to get the film recording. Simple as that. But if you’re open to new recordings, then let it be a new recording, and that includes allowing a different conductor and a different orchestra to sound, well, different.
And yeah, McNeely’s JAWS is just great. I think I have just about every release of JAWS… Original LP, Decca, Intrada 1 & 2, McNeely recording… and like them all… but the McNeely is perhaps the one I like them most.
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.
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.
Concert hall music is a different collar size altogether.
There is zero difference between “concert music” and any other type of music for me. Because all music, when listened to on its own, becomes “concert music”.
There is zero difference between “concert music” and any other type of music for me. Because all music, when listened to on its own, becomes “concert music”.
True, although I use the term for classical works generally.
“Hey, I got THE EIGER SANCTION album, but I want the film tracks”.
I did also buy that 2CD set because the film version has noticable far more edgy sound than the album version. Both are great. I rarely buy Wiliams expansions – I have more by Goldsmith but are picky in general – as the albums are quite generous from the start generally. I did buy MISSOURI BREAKS which I had on LP for years and here also the film version is as on EIGHER much rougher and differently arranged which made this interessting.
I am not really into rerecordings for film and television scores. Unless there are issues with the original – then I like having a new version that is faithful to the original. Unless the new version is specifically reinterpreting the original in some fundamental way. And the new version is advertised as such.
BUT. I have a number of examples – from purchases early in my film music listening “career” where rerecordings were all that was available and I came to love those. Much more than the subsequent original releases.
Classical recordings are different. There is no “right way” so multiple versions are fine.
Replying to Nick’s comment above, I might well concur when we have the option of listening to versions of The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars or Once Upon a Time in the West scores conducted by Dudamel, Rattle or Sir Mark Elder 🙂 Wouldn’t that be stupendous?!
There are sometimes moments that brand themselves into your memory. One of mine happened in the classical section of Tower Records in Northridge, back when a visit to a record store could still feel like a visit to the Undiscovered Country, because you never knew what was new, what to find. I was browsing the selections when something over the speakers immediately spoke to me. A sound that felt both ancient and immediate. I listened, waited, tried to place it. I asked at the store, and it turned out to be Brahms’ 4th, the then brand new Abbado recording with the Berlin Philharmonic. I stayed in store for the entire thing, standing between the shelves, browsing, listening… at least I didn’t mind spending an hour in a record store, there was lots to browse too. Anyway, that’s still one of my all time favorite classical recordings of one of my all time favorite symphonies.
Over the years, of course, additional recordings joined the ranks… I’ve got Chailly, Karajan, Böhm, Kleiber, Giulini, each one a different lens on the same granite monument. And because I’m apparently incapable of resisting a “too good not to go for it” sale, last year I added yet another set: Gardiner’s new cycle with the Royal Concertgebouw, in a pristine 24bit/192kHz download from Deutsche Grammophon. Yesterday I finally sat down with it, naturally starting with the Fourth.
The first impression was… uncertain. Underpowered. A little brittle. Less sweep, more bone. Should I go back to the Abbado? Or Kleiber… but the longer I listened, the more I allowed myself to settle into this sound and this approach, the more it pulled me in. Details shifted. Familiar passages refracted differently. It was like someone had opened yet another window in a room I thought I knew by heart.
Coming back to a beloved symphony through a new recording is like returning to a favorite garden in a new spring. The lake, the trees, the hills, yes, they are all still there. But the colors, the light, the wind, the small living things that animate the place, the flowers, the butterflies, the ducks… those change, those are new. And suddenly the familiar becomes unfamiliar in the best possible way. That is how I hear music, that is how I see music, and that is why I dislike the idea of “the one definitive recording.”. That’s like King Haggard locking up all the Unicorns because he loved their beauty, thereby destroying it. Music isn’t a fossil to put under a glas. It breathes. It shimmers. It refuses to be locked into a single set of bits and bytes. And I feel very passionate about it.
Granted, most film scores aren’t Brahms, I certainly concede that, and you don’t need a dozen recordings of JAWS to get the point, it doesn’t need that kind of scrutiny. But two? Hell, yeah. That McNeely recording makes me hear completely different details than the film tracks by John Williams. And if Dudamel would record another complete JAWS with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, you bet I’m first in line to get that recording as well. (Or any of the projects suggested by the Tall Guy.)
I love comparative listening, but I don’t have much space (or money). My collection is limited to Telarc, for the sound and generally very good performances, John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and a smattering of jazz and pop. Anymore, I listen to stuff on YouTube to figure out what to buy.
I love comparative listening, but I don’t have much space (or money). My collection is limited to Telarc, for the sound and generally very good performances, John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and a smattering of jazz and pop. Anymore, I listen to stuff on YouTube to figure out what to buy.
Those Telarc CDs are great (except maybe the sound effects). Certainly one of my favourite “projects” when it comes to re-recorded material. You can live a long and fruitful film score life just by owning those. And welcome, Sophie!
Coming back to a beloved symphony through a new recording is like returning to a favorite garden in a new spring. The lake, the trees, the hills, yes, they are all still there. But the colors, the light, the wind, the small living things that animate the place, the flowers, the butterflies, the ducks… those change, those are new. And suddenly the familiar becomes unfamiliar in the best possible way. That is how I hear music, that is how I see music, and that is why I dislike the idea of “the one definitive recording.”. That’s like King Haggard locking up all the Unicorns because he loved their beauty, thereby destroying it. Music isn’t a fossil to put under a glas. It breathes. It shimmers. It refuses to be locked into a single set of bits and bytes. And I feel very passionate about it.
I love your descriptions there, Nick. I can perfectly understand why that is an attractive part of enjoying music. But I think for me, I’ve always been more WORK-centric than PERFORMANCE-centric in my approach to music.
Well, work and performance are two sides of the same coin:
Printed score and orchestral performance
Written stage play and theatrical performance
Screen play and final motion picture
Recipe and final cake 🙂And so on. One is a blueprint, the other is the realization of it. So I think they are intertwined. A printed score is just a blueprint for realization, just as a written stage play is a blueprint for the theatrical performance. That doesn’t mean of course that you cannot sometimes focus more on the “work” and sometimes more on the “performance”, and I do have some printed scores, just like I have some written stage plays, and some screen plays. In fact, I have read quite a few screen plays, I find it very interesting do see the “blueprint” behind the realization, but essentially, one makes little sense without the other, one basically exists to bring the other into existence.
Perhaps “TITLE-specific” is more precise than “WORK-specific”. If I want to experience one particular title, I’ll reach for one particular, preferred version over and over again, rather than dipping into other interpretations regularly. While this usually lasts me for the rest of my life, sometimes other versions DO appear that become the new favourite. In film terms, for example, Cary Fukunaga’s version of JANE EYRE came along, and outshined any of the previous film interpretations, IMO.
But for music, it’s really just ONE version, and then the rest have – perhaps – academic interest at most (especially if they’re radical takes). I suppose I’m a little more moth than cat when it comes to this. Cat when it comes to experiencing multiple titles, moth when it comes to experiencing individual titles.
And if Dudamel would record another complete JAWS with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, you bet I’m first in line to get that recording as well. (Or any of the projects suggested by the Tall Guy.)
“The” Tall Guy, eh? You’ll have me signing autographs next.
Perhaps “TITLE-specific” is more precise than “WORK-specific”. If I want to experience one particular title, I’ll reach for one particular, preferred version over and over again, rather than dipping into other interpretations regularly.
Well, in that case I would say you are obviously PERFORMANCE-centric then. At least that’s how I would understand the term. Which is fine, of course.
Well, in that case I would say you are obviously PERFORMANCE-centric then. At least that’s how I would understand the term. Which is fine, of course.
That wouldn’t really fit, because the point is that I’m NOT partcularly hung up on performance minutia, and DEFINITELY not comparative performance minutia between different recordings. I just need it to be “fine”. It’s more like “I want to listen to the title LAWRENCE OF ARABIA now, so I put on the CD that I have”, rather than a need to compare it to other recordings, desire other recordings, be curious about other recordings etc. etc. It’s all very laidback. I take what I have, if what I have is okay.
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