I was looking for a collection of Wojciech Kilar's work after hearing B.S. Dracula and found this cd. I must say that I am pleased with the other recordings included on this cd; however it is just that, a compilation of other Kilar recorded works. Unfortunately, in my search for other Kilar albums I came up empty-handed. Although his other pieces on this cd are simple selections from other albums, right now it is the only way to get his music.

On a side note, the music of Kilar has a very chilling, goosebumping, romantic sound to every unique piece of music. I'm not sure why he has so few completions of scores and soundtracks, but what he has come out with is a pleasant change from the norm.

This is a reissue of performances that originally appeared in 2001 on Naxos's full-price sister label, Marco Polo. It features music of Wojciech Kilar, best known for his score for 'The Pianist,' the movie that featured Adrien Brody as a Polish pianist during the Holocaust. These scores all precede that one. Kilar, born in 1932, was a late student of Nadia Boulanger and has written much concert music, none of which I've ever heard.

His first American film score was for Francis Ford Coppola's 'Bram Stoker's Dracula.' It is appropriately a bit creepy, although the sequence, 'The Brides,' features a haunting and beautiful theme in Kilar's minimalist style. Also notable is the alto flute melody in the sequence, 'Mina/Elizabeth.' The use of inexorable drums in 'Vampire Hunter' is a bit cliche'd but effective nonetheless.

Music for 'Koenig der letzten Tage' ('The King of the Last Days'), a movie about John of Leyden has more insistent rhythms ('Sanctus') but also features a lovely English horn melody in 'Canzona' and unaccompanied chorus in what sounds like something out of Arvo Paert's or John Tavener's notebook. Roman Polanski's 1994 'Death and the Maiden,' about political torture, is represented by three sequences: 'The Confession' is for string orchestra and quite nicely overlays several planes of harmony; 'Paulina's Theme' features a plangent woodwind theme; 'Roberto's Last Chance' uses kind of chordal ostinato used by Sondheim in the more dramatic moments of his own film score, 'Stavisky,' but then it builds to a Shostakovian climax.

Kazimierz Kutz's 1980 film 'The Beads of One Rosary' is represented by one sequence, a nostalgic waltz that evokes a lost past. The last two cuts are from another Kutz film, 'Pearl in the Crown' (1972), and contains three cue numbers featuring divisi strings and those slowly beating drums again depicting the inexorability of a tragedy and it ends with what sounds like an anguished string paean to dead miners crushed in a revolt again the mine owners.

Antoni Wit conducts the Polish National Radio Symphony from the southern Polish city of Katowice, and the choral parts are sung by the Cracow Philharmonic Chorus. They all do well by this effective but not terribly original music.

TT=63:39

Scott Morrison