The first of the Hollywood series is possibly the weakest. That I would put down to the orchestra as that is the only difference between this and the others. However, that said, it is all relative! The performances are on the whole very good with only the occasional fluffed note here and there. The Jurassic Park suite and main theme from Schindler's List are both good, with the solo violinist performing well in the latter. The suite from Forrest Gump is an outstandingly arranged and performed track. It contains all the major themes and they nicely flow into each either. This performance is also included in Voyages. The Shadow really misses the synths in places and so sometimes there just sounds like that something is missing. Squanto by Joel McNeely is an interesting inclusion as I have not seen or heard of the film, I guess it was only fair the he included some of his own work. It is an interesting pastiche of mainly Far and Away and Hook both by John Williams. However it certainly shows that McNeely can write good music that would just benefit from being a little more original. The one slight problem with the actual arrangements of the music is that they aren't particularly well fitted together. Maverick is particularly bad as it just seems to move from one theme to another without uniting them very well, same goes for Squanto and True Lies. The John Williams tracks are of course very well arrange indeed as is Forrest Gump. True Lies is probably the worst track and sounds very outdated, it would have fitted better to some 1980's American television series I would say. Overall, a good compilation of the year's films, mostly well performed and certainly worth getting to sample the work of some top mid 90's composers.
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