My apologies, Doug. For some reason I hadn't noticed your posting.

I just received my CDs in the mail, lovingly packaged (as usual) and wrapped in bubble-wrap by Ed from SAE. And yes, all of the above comments seem to be true.

Paul's "scratchy and shrieky" description applies most to those familiar tracks from the old RCA LP. Most of these sound so much richer and fuller on the BMG/Collectables disc. Their counterparts on this new set are excruciatingly painful to listen to, and cues like "The Queen's Favorite" have clipped entries as well.

The remaining tracks on this Italian compilation fare better than they did on the old Legend LP set. Some of the mono tracks (especially "Battle by the Dam") have been beefed up with reverb so that they don't clash with the true stereo tracks, but the inconsistency in sound remains. [Inconsistent sound seems to be a problem with most Italian soundtracks; for example Morricone's Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood scores have been re-released adding new mono tracks (what the Italians call "inedits") with inferior sonics to the already previously released cues.] I could be wrong, but my guess is that these discs are NOT remastered from the vinyl Legend LPs as one might be inclined to think. Many of the pops and clicks that you hear on these discs are probably on the master tape, as they can be heard (faintly) even on the BMG/Collectables disc and on the old Soundtrack Library bootleg.

And Avie's right about the "English" liner notes: as written by the Italian editor/restorer/graphics-designer one-man "team" of Claudio Fuiano, it's a Anglo-Italian language all of its own, a plethora of accolades, superlatives, redundancies and run-on sentences: "legendary Hungarian composer and musician Miklos Rozsa"="important international musician Miklos Rozsa," "the first CD"="releasing for the first time," "a double CD-BOX de-luxe edition"="this double-disc set"... and this is all in the first sentence!

As for "The Dam," William, it's, as we surmised, without chorus (damn!), although ironically it sounds superior to the BMG cue-with-chorus. The new "Dance" sounds too modern, too Eastern European-influenced with its ethnic wailing clarinet. While the Hebrew prayers are beautifully intoned and interesting, I doubt that they're courtesy of the Idelsohn collection nor do I believe that Rozsa supervised their recording. They were probably commissioned by the producers for use as temp tracks before Rozsa's involvement with the project.

A more balanced listening experience of Rozsa's score would be achieved by making your own personal CD-R mix, replacing most of the RCA-LP tracks with their counterparts from the BMG/Collectables disc and omitting all of the bonus cues.