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The compilation serves as a sort of bus tour of Silvestri's contributions to the series, and its pacing can sometimes leave you wanting more. The CD features over twenty minutes from the original film, under fifteen minutes from both the sequels, and the four-minute ride score. More important to remember, though, is that beyond the newfound availability of the original score on CD, with several previously unreleased cues, you have the perk of hearing this extremely dynamic music performed by a larger ensemble and recorded in brilliant digital sound. If any trilogy of music has begged through the years for this kind of treatment, it's this one. Debney and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra had collaborated with Varèse to produce several recordings of note in 1998 and 1999, including those for Superman and Amazing Stories, both receiving wide-spread critical praise. Promised to film music enthusiasts more than a year before its release, the Back to the Future re-recordings languished in an agonizing production flux, and with the delay and several other factors, the album unfortunately never lived up to the hype. Whether criticism aimed at this compilation is warranted or not depends largely on your ability to forgive Debney for his somewhat inaccurate interpretations of the original material in order to hear it performed in such great quality and size. For casual listeners, it's simply great to hear the original Back to the Future score performed in such a lively soundscape. The weakness of that score has always been its somewhat undersized stature, though everyone would probably agree that Silvestri made up for the diminished grandeur with the pure energy and enthusiasm of his composition. If you haven't heard any of the original recordings in quite some time, then you won't notice the differences, and the performance itself is absent of errors until you reach the final cue for the ride. For the extreme enthusiasts of these scores, though, the performances of the RSNO will be marginally adequate, if not slow and lacking sufficient energy in a few parts, due to the plenty of interpretive liberties taken by Debney.

It's a case where tempo can make all the difference, and Debney seems to have taken the stance that the score can withstand some slower pacing due to its heftier size here. Some of that is a perception issue as well; since the size of the ensemble is accompanied by a significant level of reverberation, the highly precise staccato movements of Silvestri's composition can seemed washed out. The resulting bold edge to the performance causes some of the frenetic energy from the originals to be lost, and only in the suite from the ride's re-arrangement score do the quick tempos of the original film scores surface. Most fans will point to the "Clock Tower" cues as suffering the most from this slower pacing. While Debney seems to handle the primary, heroic, fanfare part of the title theme relatively well, the suspenseful interlude, which could very well be more famous due to its instantly recognizable opening three notes, is often left dragging its feet amongst the trombones. The selections from Back to the Future, Part II are much of the same, as the original is largely simply an extension of the first score. An alternate take in "The Letter" is a pleasant surprise and the previously unreleased music for "The West," Silvestri's trailer of sorts for the third film (tacked onto the end of the second one) is performed with outstanding resonance. Given how well Debney seemingly handled the teaser for Back to the Future, Part III makes Varèse's decision to include only a handful of original cues from that film a bit of a disappointment. Owners of the third score on CD will find this section useless. Debney's take on the "Point of No Return" cue alone could have redeemed this album for skeptics. The music from the ride is a decent sampling of the themes from all three films, and it borrows some enjoyable ideas from Silvestri's Predator score in the latter half, though it ends on a very sudden and unsatisfying note. Overall, this compilation may not really satisfy the musical needs of the trilogy's fans. It's fantastic for casual film score listeners, though without the crucial songs from the first film and with tempo issues in the re-recordings, it fails to serve as the ultimate in Back to the Future albums.  ****   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Alan Silvestri reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.47 (in 43 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.33 (in 40,196 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

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