Alfred Newman's score for the 1947 historical epic #Captain from Castile has been strangely under-represented on record. Charles Gerhardt and the National Philharmonic Orchestra recorded a couple of short excerpts -- most notably the rousing Conquest theme -- during the early '70s on their Alfred Newman compilation, but considering the renown of the rest of the score, that was a surprisingly paltry selection. Finally, in 2003, Screen Archives Entertainment issued this double-CD set derived from Newman's original 1947 studio recordings, comprising the complete music for the film. The 96-minute score holds up amazingly well presented in its entirety; Newman knew how to mix the colors of the orchestra better than almost anybody, and he does it well here for more than an hour and a half of completed score. The music here is a mix of late romantic lushness with a very specific Spanish flavoring, including parts for guitar (courtesy of Vincente Gomez) as well as more standard orchestral instruments. The result is a body of music that encompasses the most intimate and epic-scale material, often within the same section of the score, and it all anticipates the kind of scoring that Miklos Rozsa, in particular, would later write for films such as #Ben-Hur and #El Cid. The audio quality is surprisingly good given the late-'40s origins of the recordings, a result of 20th Century-Fox's unusually high-quality recordings during the period. The annotation is also excruciatingly thorough, and includes material distilled down from interviews with long-departed participants, including Newman himself. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

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