Finally available after four decades, this complete two-CD set of Alex North's monumental two-and-a-half-hour score for Cleopatra (1963) is a dream come true for serious film music aficionados. The story of the restoration of this music is an epic in itself, well told in the excellent accompanying 24-page colour booklet. The score is a landmark in film composition, combining elements of the bold militarism of Miklós Rózsa's Ben-Hur (1959) with North's own much more modernistic style to create a work which ranges from cold menace and atonality to the deep lyricism and romance. Considering the overlapping subject matter it is unsurprising to find references to North's own music for Spartacus (1960), though the material here is almost entirely new and is based on separate themes for Cleopatra's relationships with Anthony and Caesar, together with an "ambition" theme. Around these North weaves an extraordinarily complex fabric, interspersed with such bold set pieces as "Moon Gate" and the 14-minute "Sea Battle". Use of percussion, from the savagely warlike to the glitteringly mysterious is always imaginative, never resorting to Hollywood cliché. The restored sound, while lacking the impact of more modern recordings, is full and highly detailed. This is probably the most essential archive soundtrack release since John Williams' Superman. --Gary S Dalkin
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