2001: Music From the Films of Stanley Kubrick

City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra

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2001: Music From the Films of Stanley Kubrick Review

by William Ruhlmann

Now, here's a curiosity. Although there isn't any acknowledgement in the album's credits, Silva Screen Records' 2005 release 2001: Music From the Films of Stanley Kubrick, which typically employs the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra to re-create that music (along with Mark Ayres doing the electronic honors on Beethoven's Ode to Joy from A Clockwork Orange and the themes from Full Metal Jacket and The Shining), is a slightly re-jiggered reissue of the label's 1999 album Dr. Strangelove: Music From the Films of Stanley Kubrick. That album, released in the year of Kubrick's death and of the release of his final film, Eyes Wide Shut, did not contain any music associated with that last opus. This one adds Shostakovich's Waltz From Jazz Suite No. 2, used in the picture, such that it can claim to include excerpts from the music for all of Kubrick's major films. It also adds a version of Alex North's "Love Theme" from Spartacus. But it deletes from the earlier release three tracks that must have been licensed from other sources: the Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird" (used in Full Metal Jacket), Ray Noble's "Midnight, the Stars and You" (used in The Shining), and Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again" (used in Dr. Strangelove). The result is a more consistent, if less varied collection, mixing Kubrick's interest in classical music (Richard Strauss, Handel, and Johann Strauss II are also called upon) with the work of screen composers like North and Wendy Carlos. Particularly prominent is Gerald Fried, who scored five of Kubrick's early films and who conducts a suite of six cues drawn from them. The album gives a good sense of Kubrick's musical taste, making it a worthwhile effort, as long as one doesn't already own the earlier album.

Track Listing

Title/Composer Performer Time Stream
Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zoroaster), tone poem for orchestra, Op. 30 (TrV 176)
1 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 01:50 SpotifyAmazon
Spartacus, film score
2 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 03:39 SpotifyAmazon
3 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 02:50 SpotifyAmazon
Suite for keyboard (Suite de piece), Vol.2, No.4 in D minor, HWV 437
4 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 04:10 SpotifyAmazon
5 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 04:31 SpotifyAmazon
6 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra feat: Mark Ayres 05:38 SpotifyAmazon
Full Metal Jacket, film score
7 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra feat: Mark Ayres 05:15 SpotifyAmazon
The Shining, film score (1980)
8 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra feat: Mark Ayres 02:54 SpotifyAmazon
Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 2
9 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 03:53 SpotifyAmazon
Suite from the Early Films of Stanley Kubrick, for orchestra
10 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 04:52 SpotifyAmazon
11 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 03:29 SpotifyAmazon
12 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 05:54 SpotifyAmazon
13 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 03:45 SpotifyAmazon
14 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 02:51 SpotifyAmazon
15 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 03:05 SpotifyAmazon
Lolita Love Theme (for the film Lolita, 1962)
16 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 04:37 SpotifyAmazon
Dr. Strangelove, film score
17 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra feat: Crouch End Festival Chorus 02:12 SpotifyAmazon
18 City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 10:06 SpotifyAmazon
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