John Barry

Quartet Records presents a new limited-edition CD release featuring a John Barry triptych: his scores for three acclaimed British films from the 1960s: Four in the Morning, The L-Shaped Room and Dutchman. Between 1962 and 1967, English composer John Barry scored three black-and-white films tackling serious social and cultural issues. All featured stunning performances, and all would earn acclaim - particularly on the film-festival circuit - for their excellence as drama. Four in the Morning (1965), directed by Anthony Simmons and starring Judi Dench, features one of Barry’s most intimate scores, written for a small chamber ensemble with a particular emphasis on woodwinds and percussion. It is an introspective score in the vein of what he had composed for Séance on a Wet Afternoon and would later continue with The Whisperers.

The L-Shaped Room (1962), starring Leslie Caron, marked Barry’s first collaboration with Bryan Forbes. That same year, he arranged and recorded the “James Bond Theme” for Dr. No, marking the beginning of his legendary association with the series. Although Barry wrote only two cues for the film’s party scene, The L-Shaped Room planted the seed for a fruitful collaboration with Forbes and remains an important film in the composer’s career. Dutchman (1967), directed by Anthony Harvey and starring Shirley Knight. Barry would later score Harvey’s The Lion in Winter, one of the composer’s most celebrated masterpieces, which earned him his third Academy Award. For this intense, compact film - barely an hour long and based on the play by Amiri Baraka - Barry composed a stark, intense and distinctive theme, briefly reprised midway through the film and again over the end credits.

The Four in the Morning album has previously been released on CD several times, but for this edition it has been carefully remastered from the first-generation tapes used for the U.S. LP version, with the dialogue removed. It is presented in both true stereo - with none of the digital “fake stereo” processing heard on some of the previous editions - and mono. We have included also the mono version because it features several unique mixes and takes that make it subtly different from its stereo counterpart.

The L-Shaped Room has been a genuine discovery: for the first time, the two cues Barry composed for the film are being released - and both in stereo. In the case of Dutchman, the isolated music stem was the only available source, from which we have included the opening and closing titles. (The music heard midway through the film was simply an edit of the Main Title.) The album has been meticulously restored and mastered by Chris Malone and includes an in-depth essay by leading John Barry authority Jon Burlingame.

Three low-budget, black-and-white British films from the 1960s, each built around an outstanding female performance, and each featuring a unique musical contribution by John Barry. All three are well worth revisiting.