It had to happen eventually, but yes, it's a slightly disappointing Charles Gerhardt re-recording. Gerhardt's earliest film music re-recordings focussed on golden age scores, but he evidently came to realise the brilliance of the newer generation and embarked on several albums, including one for each of the original Star Wars films. Return of the Jedi is often considered the weakest of the trilogy both as a film and musically - this is, of course, all relative. The down sides of the score are generally for when not much happens onscreen and so the music noodles around, not really going anywhere. Of course, there is still a good hour and a half of superb music and this album collects around half of that into a symphonic suite.

The opening is not promising, the rendition of the title crawl music (of which I have around thirty different recorded versions in my collection - which is quite scary) is somewhat flabby and not helped by a surprisingly soft acoustic. Unsurprisingly, all the original concert versions are included; Parade of the Ewoks is often ridiculed as being somewhat silly, but it's light hearted fun and certainly doesn't undermine the seriousness of the score as a whole. The arrangement here highlights the dinky percussion which may amuse or annoy. Curiously, both the concert version (Battle in the Forest) and original film version (The Ewok Battle - with a slightly amended finale) of the Forest Battle are included, but both get a decent airing, even if pairing The Ewok Battle with Return of the Jedi (Sail Barge Assault) lumps too much action together. The performance of Return of the Jedi is also a bit flat, the rhythmic tightness of the original is absent and it bumbles along when it should be an exhilarating thrill ride.

The quieter moments are all fine, notably a lovely Luke and Leia, although including both Han Solo Returns (which sounds even more like an outtake from Raiders of the Lost Ark) and Jabba the Hutt seems a little too much as neither is especially outstanding. In fact, the omissions seem more obvious than the inclusions - no music for the Emperor or the spectacular final showdown between Luke and Vadar. However, the lack of a chorus in the Ewok finale suggests that the budget didn't extend to a choir, thus the omissions seem more understandable. The finale starts off fine, but the orchestra doesn't seem happy playing along with the ethnic percussion and the transition to the end titles is verging on horrible. That might seem to add up to an album that's not worth hearing, but as a companion to the Special Edition, it's interesting enough, but it doesn't see Gerhardt or the National Philharmonic on their usual sparkling form and from that point of view, is somewhat disappointing.

Rating ~

1. Main Title: Approaching the Death Star (3:25)
2. Parade of the Ewoks (3:21)
3. Luke and Leia (5:13)
4. Jabba the Hutt (3:37)
5. Return of the Jedi (5:22)
6. The Ewok Battle (2:55)
7. Han Solo Returns (3:19)
8. Into the Trap - Fight in the Dungeon (4:16)
9. Heroic Ewok (2:09)
10. Battle in the Forest (4:06)
11. Finale (8:05)

Total Time ~ 46:24