Ennio Morricone

55 years ago, the fourth Western movie directed by Sergio Leone, C’Era Una Volta Il West, was screened for the first time, and in the plans of the director, should have closed the circle of his engagement with this cinematic genre. Compared to the Dollars Trilogy, the movie marks an important stylistic change; it’s an epic full of allegories, with an immensely powerful script. Considered by many to be Ennio Morricone’s masterpiece, it marks an evolution in his music, which often takes over for the images. Exceptional collaborators such as Edda Dell’Orso, Alessandro Alessandroni and Franco De Gemini are the main actors of this score, the director of which is the Maestro. It is to one of them, Franco De Gemini, whom Beat Records in collaboration with Universal Music Publishing wish to dedicate this 50th anniversary edition, in a guise you’ve never experienced before.

An accurate remastering by Claudio Fuiano and Daniel Winkler corrected a few formal imprecisions of the wonderful previous editions as well as some minor stereophonic flaws, and now we can finally say we have an album that meets our expectations for such a milestone edition of this score, even correcting some small flaws of the previous edition. But the surprises don’t stop there. Five years after the death of the popular Ferraran harmonica player, the entire recording sessions of the score were discovered, over three hours long, including studio chatter from which we extracted a small recording of Franco’s voice while he is conducting sound tests to find the best sound for his harmonica in a particular scene. We present this gift to you at the end of the album as a memorial to this great harmonica artisan, a sonic cameo as a little witness to his industriousness.

The CD comes in a jewel case with a richly-illustrated, 24-page booklet featuring liner notes by Daniele De Gemini, along with 4 collector’s plasticized cards, all gathered in a hard box external case. Limited to only 500 copies, it’s a meeting with cinema and music history that can’t be missed.